Mobile Game of the week: John Cena’s Fast Lane

We review a mobile game every week, and we almost always focus on ones that we either like or that have a high profile. That might give an unrealistic portrayal of the general quality level of mobile games. Go look at the App Store or Google Play: Most games are trash. Cheaply produced rip-offs and low quality tie-ins abound. Case in point: John Cena’s Fast Lane, a racing(-ish) game starring World Wrestling Entertainment Champion John Cena. If you ever want to see how bad mobile games can be, here’s a solid choice.

John Cena’s Fast Lane isn’t actually a racing game. It’s a gear-shifting game. You don’t control the car’s speed. You don’t control the direction, although every track is a straight line, so there’s no direction to control, anyway. All you do is shift gears. There’s an on-screen gas pedal you can tap before a race starts for an immediate speed boost, but once the race starts all you do is stare at a meter until a certain light flashes and then tap a button to shift gears.

After a few races you will meet an opponent you simply can’t beat until you upgrade your car. The game will send you to the garage, and if you’re playing on an iPad 2 like I was, it will probably crash on the way. After reloading the game you can spend in-game money to upgrade your car’s engine, transmission or tires. Each limb on this meager stat tree is locked out for a few hours after you buy an upgrade, so you can’t blitz through a few dozen races in a couple of hours and buy the best possible engine. There’s also a gas meter that can be refilled with in-game money. If it runs out, and you can’t afford to refill it, you can’t play the game for a while. It’s doing you a favor.