Yes, the John Cena Racing Game is every bit as terrible as you’d think it would be
[wptab name=’Friday the 13th – Cena Lives!’]
Cena’s reaction after hearing rumors of his death or playing his terrible racing game
It’s been two weeks, and people are still asking if John Cena is alive or dead.
I am beginning to think that John Cena is no longer a person, but rather a construct. The Cena Paradox, I’m calling it. It is the working theory that John Cena, professional wrestler and Ph.D of Thuganomics, exists somewhere in the nebulous ether between the real and the imagined. It is the theory that John Cena is immaterial and timeless. It is the hypothesis that John Cena is something felt and something known, but he is something that never truly is.
Every time I read another comment that expresses disbelief in the continued subsistence of a man who I have now affirmed to be alive and well in two lengthy articles and who continually proves his own existence by doing such simple things as being alive and functioning as a sentient being, I can feel myself peering into another universe of which I am not a part. It is a strange and terrifying place. A place where the word “rapadoo” carries insidiously on the fetid winds.
That is not dead which can eternal lie,
And with strange aeons even John Cena may die.
Madness, thy name is John Cena.
The original article has even received a comment from someone who appears to be a “Cena is Dead” truther:
As HOAX deftly points out, this year’s Wrestlemania will be the 31st, and a video of Cena wrestling Mark Henry that was embedded in the original article features a brief glimpse of the Wrestlemania XXVIII sign in the background.
This would indicate that the video is three years old. Because it is. This proves something, I’m quite sure. Perhaps that Cena has been dead the whole time and that we are all Haley Joel Osment.
or Illuminati Confirmed
Perhaps this merely suggests that timespace has folded in on itself and that we all exist in infinite moments that can all be defined simultaneously as the present. Perhaps it is as much 2015 as it is 2012. Perhaps it is as much 2012 as it is 1912. Perhaps time is not linear, but rather a big ball of wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey stuff. John Cena stuff.
I have also seen multiple instances where other websites have reported on the falseness of Cena’s demise and, in so doing, offered up a line to the effect of the following:
In recent years, there have been false reports of untimely deaths of wrestling’s biggest stars among them Owen Hart, Eddie Guerrero, and Chris Benoit.
I hate to be the bearer of bad news to whomever constructed this sentence and thought that it represented something remotely factual, but Owen Hart passed away 16 years ago, Eddie Guerrero has been gone for nearly a decade, and it’s been almost eight years since He Who Shall Not Be Named took his life after committing a horrifying double murder. Those are not “false reports.” Those are actual untimely deaths.
But perhaps they are not wrong. Perhaps I am standing with one foot in a universe where both Owen Hart and Eddie Guerrero are still alive and still wrestling. (Oh, what a wonderful place that would be.) Perhaps I have simply crossed over into another time and place where the lives of professional wrestlers exist in some Schrodinger-esque state of non-life/non-death. (Parts Unknown?) In this place, John Cena is never truly dead, nor is he ever truly alive, but he always stands for the virtues of hustle, loyalty, and respect.
He does, apparently, have a mobile game about street racing in this universe. Let’s talk about that for a moment, if yew weeel.
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[wptab name=’A Review of the Awful, Cena-Branded Mobile Racing Game’]
Let’s have a chit-chat about John Cena’s Fast Lane.
I only spent about an hour with John Cena’s Fast Lane—available for free on iOS and Android—and that was absolutely all that I needed to get what I could out of it. Is this because I merely need to introduce something decidedly automotive in nature in order to put together another ridiculous John Cena blog for this site? Is it because John Cena’s Fast Lane is one of those games that touts itself as free-to-play but limits your ability to play past a pre-set time limit unless you are willing to pay money for the privilege? Yes. But moreover, I could only hang with John Cena’s Fast Lane for an hour because it is a thoroughly hollow, utterly unsatisfying, and completely un-enjoyable experience that doesn’t compel you to play it in any way whatsoever.
Also, too beautiful
Let’s be clear: John Cena’s Fast Lane is not a racing game. Sure, there are cars, and there is the artifice of competition, but there is no actual racing that takes place here. You do not control your car or its speed in any way; you merely press an accelerator pedal, press the paddle shifter when a light tells you to shift, and hope that your car beats the other one to the finish line. Sometimes you win these incredibly slow races (before upgrades, your car runs a 0-to-60 time of 20.63 seconds in the first race…seriously). Sometimes you don’t.
When you don’t win, it’s not because you need to practice your shifting or improve your skills. It’s because your car simply needs more upgrades to compete with the big boys. Guess what that means…
PAY UP, SUCKER
You’ll earn enough cash and gold in the first couple of races to get an immediate engine upgrade, which allows you to compete in a couple more races and accumulate enough cash to pay for an immediate transmission upgrade. You’ll win another race—maybe two if you use your complimentary tank of NOS—and then you will lose to your next opponent over and over in the same exact pre-determined fashion until you run out of gas.
Oh yeah. Did I mention that your car has a finite amount of gas that eventually runs out after a few races? Well, it does. Want to continue (not) racing when you’ve used up your six plays? Well, you can wait for the timer to run out and your fuel supply to replenish itself completely, or…
YOO-HOO
It’s just like the real world, only it’s somehow more terrible!
Because this is a WWE product, there’s a completely nonsensical and superfluous story. You are a young buck (but, presumably, not Matt or Nick Jackson because those guys are SO FULL OF THEMSELVES) trying to break onto the scene of illegal underground street racing. Fortunately for you, John Cena is also an illegal street racer, and he seems to like you enough that he throws you into the thick of things against a guy known as Southie Todd, who is clearly an Internet mark.
He says “Five Moves of Doom” because he’s a nerd and doesn’t know the businesssss
Southie Todd sets you up to race against nine of his minions, all of whom drive equally ugly and undefined cars. Upon beating them, you’ll race Southie Todd; if you win, you advance to the next city, which is populated by nine more minions and another boss. Wash, rinse, repeat for 8 different levels. The final boss is John Cena. Because he’s not dead.
“But enough talk! Have at you!”
Sound repetitive? Oh god, is it ever.
If you want to rack up levels and cash so that you advance more quickly, you can just be patient and race the impossible-to-lose-to Marky over and over until you have enough capital to upgrade your car to the point where it sprints just a bit faster than a Gremlin on cinder blocks. If you actually want to grind your way through a terrible cash-in free-to-play, you do you, but I’d be lying if I said I didn’t have serious concerns for your time-management skills.
Of course, the first upgrades you obtain for the engine and transmission are basically gimmes, but you’ll have no such luck with later upgrades for the engine, transmission, tires, or turbo—they’ll all require that you to meet a certain skill level and that you also wait two hours or so for the upgrades to take effect. You’d have more fun going to an actual garage and waiting two hours to have your brakes replaced.
For the masochistic, you can also pay precious cash to customize your ride with WWE logos, GroundFX, different paint jobs, and new wheels. Don’t do this. Please. I’m asking you nicely. You’re better than this.
You can also upgrade your ugly car to increasingly powerful and ugly cars over time, which will lead to the illusion that you are doing a better job of racing. Yay.
Gallery: The Wonderfully Hideous Cars of John Cena’s Fast Lane
So why is this a WWE product again? Oh yeah, John Cena (he’s still alive, by the way). He appears occasionally in the form of some truly godawful artwork that would make even Rob Liefeld wretch.
Needs more pouches and spikes
When you win, you’re treated to muted audio of Cena barking out positive reinforcement (“Way to win! Keep that hustle going!”); when you lose, you’re treated to muted audio of Cena attempting to will you on (“Don’t you give up on me now!”). Given that this game is marketed toward kids, giving up and letting down the man whose mantra is “Never Give Up” is severely frowned upon. Oh, are you out of gas or just don’t have the mojo to get over the hump in your race against Danny? Did we mention…
CHA-CHING
Oh, and another reason I could only handle an hour of John Cena’s Fast Lane: my phone could only handle an hour of it. After that, the app crashed every time I attempted to launch it. Like John Cena in the Accolade at the Fast Lane PPV (which appears to have stolen its name from this terrible game), it simply couldn’t take any more.
My advice: if you are a fan of mobile racing games, just stick with Real Racing 3, because that game is awesome, beautiful, and actually lets you race.
If you are a John Cena fan, it’s not like you don’t have plenty of opportunities to shell out your hard-earned money (or your parents’ hard-earned money) to prove to the world that he is your shining star and a kingdom of wrestler. Take the money that you would spend buying crappy upgrades in a crappy “racing” game and buy some texting gloves or something.
As long as you gimme that sweet money, kids!
No buys.
[/wptab]
[wptab name=’The Current Status of John Cena’]
That’s a contract?
Finally, I want to take a look at John Cena’s status after his March 2012 car accident. John Cena is in stable condition, and he was last seen signing the contract for his US Title match against Rusev at Wrestlemania on Monday night in what was a truly underwhelming segment.
John Cena was not involved in any sort of life-claiming accident after the show—at least not in this universe—and he is alive and well. This is more than I can say for the hype surrounding this year’s Wrestlemania, which is in critical condition after a head-on collision with narrative logic.
Will John Cena still not be dead in time to be alive for his match on The Grandest Stage of Them All? Stay tuned, because I’ll probably have the updates if I keep getting the questions.
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[raw][wptab name=’Cena Did Not Die Two Weeks Ago’ link=”https://thenewswheel.com/today-in-debunkery-john-cena-is-not-dead/#Did-John-Cena-Die-in-a-Car-Crash-“][/wptab][/raw]
[raw][wptab name=’Nor Did He Die Last Week’ link=”https://thenewswheel.com/update-john-cena-is-still-alive/”][/wptab][/raw]
[end_wptabset]
Kyle S. Johnson lives in Cincinnati, a city known by many as “the Cincinnati of Southwest Ohio.” He enjoys professional wrestling, Halloween, and also other things. He has been writing for a while, and he plans to continue to write well into the future. See more articles by Kyle.