CSR Racing 2

CSR Racing 2 (short for Custom Street Racing 2) is a free-to-play drag racing game developed by British software company NaturalMotion Games Limited. It's the sequel to CSR Racing and the third game in the CSR Racing series. The game is available for download on Android and iOS devices.

Plot
The story starts with the player taking the role of a new racer arriving at the city of Los Derivas hoping to make a name for him/herself. He/she is accepted by the Pit Row Racing crew, whose leader Jerry promises to earn him/her a place in the CSR Grand Finals should he/she help him retrieve his lost car collection. With the help of Jess the mechanic, the player purchases and builds his/her first car and takes on Kareem "KJ" Johnson's Nu Fangz crew, who are rumoured to have information on the lost cars.

After defeating Nu Fangz, the player is directed to the GoldRushers crew with the help of KJ. The GoldRushers' leader, Ashleigh, is seen driving a Mercedes-Benz CLA 45 AMG Shooting Brake that is a part of Jerry's collection.

After being defeated, Ashleigh finally admits to having bought the car from the Azure Inferno crew. At first, the members of Azure Inferno deny any connection with the theft. However, the crew's leader Kurtz admits in committing the theft but gives no information on the cars' whereabouts. Eventually, the player defeats Kurtz who flees the city while several Inferno members get arrested.

Living up to his promise, Jerry signs the player up to compete in the CSR Grand Finals, a racing tournament held by Tyler Shax - head of Shax Industries (a tuning company and performance upgrade manufacturer) who rejected the player at the start of the game. After defeating several crew leaders and Victor Kidd - Shax Industries' sponsored racer - Tyler Shax declares the player victorious and rewards him/her with a contract of Shax Industries.

Before accepting the player as his racer, Shax decides to test the player by having him/her race his employees. However, with each member of his company defeated, Shax feels more and more agitated. After defeating Victor Kidd again, an infuriated Shax decides to challenge the player him/herself. It turns out Shax had no intentions hiring the player, instead only wanting the player to fail so that he can shows his company's superiority and attract business. Shax also admits that he is the one who ordered Kurtz to steal Jerry's cars, and that he kept the best one - a Koenigsegg Agera R - for himself and had the rest scrapped and sold to the player as parts. Eventually Tyler Shax is defeated and forced to leave Los Derivas, and the Pit Row Racing crew has regained its former glory thanks to the player who has become the top racer in the city.

Sometime later, Altay, a member of the East Coast based crew Tempe5t, attempts a Hostile takeover on the city, but the player, after obtaining his/her first elite license, manages to drive him off with the help of Amelia, Angel, KJ, Shana, and Larry. Later on, Ruby Rose, the second member of Tempe5t, attempts the same thing only to be driven off as well this time with the help of Finn, Ashley, Dana, Konduit, and Kikiya. 1 year and 2 months later, Ruby's brother Rico shows up and is defeated by the player with the help of Sneak, Petah, Summer Harkness, her father John Harkness and Donna.

More Storyline parts will be coming assuming the devs will not be throwing out more Pay Events!

Why It Leaves Microtransactions in the Palm of Your Hands
NOTE: Many of the problems were caused by Zynga acquiring NaturalMotion two years and five months before the game was released.


 * 1) Being a drag racing game, the gameplay is rather shallow, involving only launching, shifting, and using the NOS, therefore making the game more closely resemble a rhythm game.
 * 2) The game is very grind heavy: to push a car to its maximum potentials one must collect stage 6 upgrade parts and fusion parts for it. These parts can only be won from loot boxes, racing in time-limited events, or obtained by scrapping a car of the same manufacturer. While obtaining them for cars that are from manufacturers that have at least one store purchasable car are relatively easy, getting them all for exotics is a totally different story.
 * 3) Speaking of loot boxes, they are the main methods to obtain better cars in the game. These boxes either yield superior versions of regular cars (1*-3*), or exotics (2*-5*) that can only be obtained from them.
 * 4) * Click here for drop rates.
 * 5) From Tier 2 onwards, most cars can either be obtained only from loot boxes or bought with gold (hard currency). In Tier 5, only 3 of the 110+ cars can be bought with in-game cash!
 * 6) When you win a car from opening a loot box (this also includes Loyalty rewards during Prestige/Gold Cup), you will have no clue what color it will have or even if it will come with a livery. What's even worse is that all cars obtained through loot boxes only (including the purple star cars which are obtained by beating the boss's time, bought with real money, Gift cars, and the Season prize cars) cannot have their color changed. Only the license plates can be customized on them. Non-road legal cars like the Aston Martin Vulcan or the Ferrari FXX K (which are loot box exclusive) cannot even be customized at all!
 * 7) The fact that loot boxes always yield superior cars makes buying cars at the showroom with gold completely pointless.
 * 8) Microtransactions have gone rampant in this game. First, the Bugatti Chiron RED edition which was part of the 2016 RED charity event, then there are the flash cars (Like the Lamborghini Centenario LP 770-4 Roadster and Zenvo TS1 GT 10th Anniversary Edition), then there are the cars from Fate of the Furious (e.g. Roman Pearce's Vorsteiner Bentley Continental BR9 which used to be the fastest T4 car until it was surpassed by D.K's Nissan 350Z (Z33)), then there are Ferrari and Porsche 70th Anniversary Edition cars and now we have Formula Italia and Best of British cars. Those can only be bought with real money. Adding insult to injury, the game throws special events where only these cars can participate.
 * 9) * Adding even more insult to injuries, the extra part crate for those IAP only cars (though you get 1 free every 24 hours) can only be bought with real money! Why can't we just use our bronze keys?
 * 10) *One of the worst offenders is the Ferrari LaFerrari Aperta 70th Anniversary Edition, which can only be won by completing a time-limited event that requires all 5 Ferrari special edition cars.
 * 11) * As of 2019, CSR2 has become so extremely atrocious with its excessive microtransactions that it has become a pay-to-play game . It is highly recommended to avoid this game for your own sanity.
 * 12) Some of the aforementioned premium cars are just preexisting cars with a bodykit (like the Liberty Walk NC1 2017 Honda NSX). Even more ridiculous is how some of them (like the Liberty Walk versions of the 2014 Audi R8 V10 plus Coupé (Type 42), RS 5 Coupé, and even the Lamborghini Aventador LP700-4 Coupé) don't share stage 6 parts with their stock counterparts. The 70th Anniversary Edition's 488 Spider, F12berlinetta, and GTC4Lusso, an d Fate of the Furious's Shaw's Jaguar F-TYPE, Toretto's Dodge Challenger SRT Demon, and Letty's Local Motors Rally Fighter are also guilty of the same thing.
 * 13) Some new cars (e.g. Porsche 918 Spyder with Weissach Package and Aston Martin Vulcan AMR Pro) appear as season prizes, which are only entitled to the members of the top 10 best crews.
 * 14) The fact that some of the premium cars, like the Hennesey Venom F5 "Concept" or the Varis Honda Civic Type R (FK8) (1/2 mile and 1/4 mile, respectively), are the fastest in their tier makes the game even more pay to win. In fact, out of the top 10 fastest cars in CSR2 which are all in T5, all of them can only be obtained with real money or through TLE that requires special edition cars or cars that can only be obtained from loot boxes.
 * 15) Several of the cars in the game are not accurately represented; how is a 493 horsepower Porsche 911 GT3 RS (991.1) placed in the same class with a Bugatti Chiron that has thrice the power?!
 * 16) * The Bugatti Chiron now clearly beats the aforementioned 991.1 GT3 RS due to the latter being modified in a later update.
 * 17) Poor grasp of Fate of the Furious sources; for example (mostly due to licensing issues with Vin Diesel's character), Dominic Toretto's Dodge Challenger SRT Demon and Plymouth Roadrunner GTX were named Hobbs' Demon and Hobbs' Roadrunner even though Luke Hobbs (Dwayne Johnson) drove neither of the two cars in the film.
 * 18) There was a period of time when the bosses in the storyline drive special cars that cannot be obtained legitimately, such as when Petah drove a Tier 3 Mazda RX-7 (FD) Rocket Bunny which was later made into a Tier 4 Season/Milestone Prize and the Tempe5t 3 update changed it with a Label Motorsport Camaro.
 * 19) The developers focus on adding more cars into the game instead of fixing existing issues. It even took them 14 months to bring us Tempe5t 3.
 * 20) *They also manage to lock them behind extreme paywalls as part of business orders from Zynga.
 * 21) As is the case with current mobile racers, CSR 2 is often the first game to feature a new car model (thus marking that car's video game debut), although this is not a good thing and is becoming more frowned upon as more often than not, the new cars that are added to the game are blocked off by massive paywalls and are purposely given better performance than previous cars to lure out our wallet. Unfortunately, CSR 2 is extremely guilty of this, even more so than any other F2P racing game! The most notable examples are Dom's Plymouth GTX and the recent Brabham BT62.
 * 22) *This also goes into an above-mentioned point where the devs are much too focused on adding new cars into the game as opposed to actually fixing existing issues with the game.
 * 23) *Once a new exotic car comes out, the CSR 2 devs will try to get their hands on it, and unfortunately, they have a somewhat high success rate.
 * 24) *Other examples of cars CSR 2 stole before console games could debut them instead include:
 * 25) *#Chevrolet Corvette ZR1 (C7) (eventually appeared in mh:awesomegames:Forza Horizon 4).
 * 26) *#Lamborghini Aventador LP 770-4 SVJ (eventually appeared in mh:awesomegames:Need for Speed Heat) and SC18.
 * 27) *#Pagani Huayra Roadster BC and Pagani Huayra R.
 * 28) *#Ferrari 488 Pista (eventually appeared in The Crew 2)
 * 29) *#Lamborghini Huracán LP 640-4 Performante (both Coupé and Spyder versions; Coupé eventually appeared in mh:awesomegames:Assetto Corsa, and Spyder eventually appeared in Need For Speed Heat).
 * 30) *#Bugatti Chiron (eventually appeared in Forza Motorsport 7).
 * 31) *#Brabham BT62 (eventually appeared in GRID).
 * 32) *#Bugatti Chiron Super Sport 300.
 * 33) *#Lotus Emira
 * 34) *#McLaren Elva
 * 35) *#Aston Martin DBX (eventually appeared in DIRT 5)
 * 36) *#McLaren Speedtail (eventually appeared in Forza Horizon 4).
 * 37) *#Ford Shelby GT500 (S-550) (eventually appeared in The Crew 2).
 * 38) *#Koenigsegg Gemera (eventually appeared in The Crew 2).
 * 39) *#Mercedes-AMG GT Black Series (eventually appeared in mh:awesomegames:Gran Turismo 7)
 * 40) *#McLaren Artura (appeared in F1 22)
 * 41) The game's high-end graphics makes it hard to run on certain devices.
 * 42) The anti-aliasing for this game is among the worst of any racing game released in this generation. This ultimately depends on the device, though.
 * 43) The game also crashes when choosing multiplayer mode on certain Android devices.
 * 44) Every new update the game releases is data greedy, with the updates themselves requiring more gigabytes than what other mobile games usually have for updates! Which means you have to delete all of the other games on your device just to save up loads of space!
 * 45) At the start of Tempe5t Chapter 3, you are only allowed to drive the Mazda MX-5 Miata (ND) in T1! Sure, it has purple stars and all, but it's sluggishly slow!
 * 46) Speaking of cars, the devs are getting lazy these days, as several of the latest additions of cars include:
 * 47) * Dodge Viper GTC "Snakeskin Edition", essentially a Dodge Viper with a few extra aero parts and a unique green livery.
 * 48) * Hennessey Venom GT Spyder Final Edition, basically a palette swapped version of the pre-existing Venom GT Spyder.
 * 49) * A Plymouth 'Cuda "TorC" Weaver Customs with a different livery.
 * 50) * The regular Zenvo TS1 GT, essentially the same as the 10th Anniversary Edition, only without the unique blue and black livery.
 * 51) * McLaren P1™ GTR "Pebble Beach", essentially the production #51 McLaren P1™ GTR with the Design Concept livery shown at the Pebble Beach Concours d'Elegance in 2014.
 * 52) * AC Schnitzer ACS8, essentially a BMW i8 Coupe with different rims and a spoiler!
 * 53) This game is also very guilty of rehashing various cars in the game and adding them as separate cars; for example, there are 3 Lamborghini Centenario LP 770-4 Roadster models.
 * 54) The Sprint events in Tempe5t have opponents that are scripted to run extremely fast times, likely making it a pseudo-paywall as you must have an extremely upgraded car to beat these.
 * 55) Power creep. As with Asphalt 8: Airborne, almost any highest-tier car required to win races in higher level races requires paying with money.
 * 56) Live Race (the game's multiplayer); players use this technique called swapping, which involves trading victories with another player (especially for quick RP gains), which also ruins the purpose of competitive online racing games.

Redeeming Qualities

 * 1) The game captures the concept of drag racing rather well.
 * 2) The graphics are simply amazing and comparable to a console game when played on a decent device.
 * 3) The game allows players to interact with their cars, anything from hoods to doors to retractable roofs to active aerodynamics can be opened/closed.
 * 4) Compared to its predecessor, the game gives you more free reign with cars, allowing you to adjust final drive ratio, tire pressure and go on test runs, etc, for free.
 * 5) The game includes a long list of fantastic cars.
 * 6) The highly detailed car models featured in this game provides excellent modding material for games such as GTA V and Shift 2: Unleashed.
 * 7) Similar to Test Drive Unlimited games, when viewing a car at the showroom, the game will present you all of the stock body/interior colors as well as all of the available wheel rims. Giving you an impression of speccing and buying a car in real-life.
 * 8) Customization, while still limited, has been expanded since the last game. All options can now be purchased with cash.
 * 9) After opening enough crates during said event (15 Silver crates for Prestige and 10 Golden crates for (Legendary) Golden Cup) and somehow you did not get the needed car that has better chance to drop, Donna Banks (the lady that runs the Rare Imports (better known as the unholy loot box shop)) will give it to you as a Loyalty gift.
 * 10) You can claim some Japanese Tuner cars for free, without having to spend anything, which are (for multiple choice-ones, you can only choose one of the two for free, the other, you will have to buy with gold):
 * 11) *Subaru BRZ TS (ZC6)
 * 12) *Subaru WRX STI (VAB) or Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution X Final Edition (CZ4A)
 * 13) *Honda S2000 (AP1) or Mazda RX-7 (FD3S)
 * 14) *Toyota GR Supra (J29/DB/JZA90) (reach level 30 to claim for free)
 * 15) *Lexus LC 500 (GWZ100) (reach level 40 and play 3 races with it to claim for free)