I’ve always enjoyed standalone experiences that are able to compress a larger game into a bite-sized concept. A lot of sports products aren’t really able to do this because of their scale, but racing is a genre that lends itself well to this conceit. With Forza Horizon 2 Presents Fast & Furious, the developers at Playground Games (and Turn 10) have managed to create a satisfying appetizer for their main games. It actually manages to serve all interested parties, as existing players get more content to dig into, new players get a taste of the Forza world, the developers get to entice you to buy the full game, and the producers of the Fast & Furious movies get a decent advertising mechanism. This game is free until April 10, 2015, but even at the after price of $10, it’s worth your time. The biggest strength of this is that you don’t need to own any Forza products in order to participate.

The setup is fairly simple: you play a generic street racer who’s doing his thing until Tej (voiced by Ludacris) calls you up. It seems that Tej — and, presumably, the other Fast & Furious characters — need a bunch cars collected from all around France, and it’s your job to go complete street races, point-to-point challenges and other specialty missions in order to locate and acquire these cars. All of these story missions are woven throughout the various areas on the map, and you’ll also come across “bucket list” challenges, reward boards for smashing and speed traps for going up against your friends.

Doing these activities will probably take in the neighborhood of six hours to complete (around three hours for just the story mode), but what’s great is that this standalone experience also includes things like drivatars, photo mode and online free roam. The whole package is really smart way to introduce people to the concept of Forza Horizon games, and it gives you a fair shake at everything so you can decide whether to buy one of the full products in the franchise.

The driving on offer is still incredibly strong, as it always has been in this series. You can easily throttle the difficulty and the assists to tailor the experience to your liking, and helpful elements like the driving line and the ability to rewind at any point allow you to really get what you want out of the game. None of the races should be too challenging on the default settings (except maybe the last one), but you can always just redo a course or a section of a course to keep things light and breezy.

The off-roading sections freshen up the driving that’s usually in Forza games, and you’ll unlock a Jeep Wrangler Unlimited and Plymouth Road Runner (amongst others) to take on these sections of the map. Sometimes it’s fun just to tool around farm country in France and destroy some foliage, and this product still gives you ample time to do that. The damage modelling on display remains impressive, with awesome deformations, dents and dings on these speed machines.

Of course, a lot of the driving is going to be faster drag races and point-to-point sprints, and that’s where you’ll use stuff like the McLaren P1, Bugatti Veyron and Nissan GT-R. As you’d expect, the Dodge Charger R/T, one of the iconic cars from the films, is present in this game. There are 11 cars in total, and the game smartly allows you to drive around in what you like and then prompts you to switch cars once you get to a race. Some events require a specific car, and others give you a few options, allowing you to drive what you like when it makes sense. Most of the events you race in will be populated with drivatars of your friends and other people, and it’s still a fun touch to see your friends whizzing by on a track.

The basic concept for acquiring cars for Tej is that you need to first locate the car and then race to get it. Sometimes you’ll have to find a car in an area, like in a barn out in a farm field, whereas other times you’ll just have to drive out to somewhere like the airport in order to locate it. You’ll usually then have to either race against that particular car or do some kind of other gimmick. One mission has you trying to outpace a chopper in the rain, whereas the final mission involves the airport and a large cargo plane. Good stuff.

The one minor gameplay wrinkle that’s unique to this release is the inclusion of nitrous for some of the races. This is governed by a meter that shows how much you’ve got left. It doesn’t replenish or anything like that, so you’ve got to use it when it counts in order to pass the last few racers. There are even a couple of achievements that are built around the use of nitrous at certain points.

About my only beef would be that the game could’ve used a few more tie-ins to the actual movie, as several of the missions start to feel pretty familiar. Sure, there are some themed achievements and a couple of music tracks that are ripped from the movie(s), but adding a couple of extra layers of immersion (characters, events, moments) might have been fun. Obviously there are limits on this sort of thing, but I would have liked to see a bit more variety than just racing for pinks over and over again. There are those couple of gimmick races, but more would’ve been nice.

Since the game is free until April 10, it’s a great offering at no cost. Even if you grab it later for $10, there is lots for you and your friends to do. It gives a good taste of the Forza Horizon world, which is still a fun time, thanks to good-looking cars, a strong driving engine and some robust features. I’ve never been the biggest racing guy, but an experience like this is perfect for casual and mid-level fans. Check it out.

Good: Great driving engine; strong visual design; fully featured (online free roam, photo mode, etc.)

Bad: Limited connection to the movie(s); could’ve used more mission variety

Bottom Line: Whether you’re paying $10 or getting it for free, this is a standalone experience that’s totally worth your time.