You will notice that this game is much higher rated by the people who are playing it than the professional reviewers.
You must not compare Nintendo DS titles to full consoles. Or to the PSP which is a different sort of beast altogether.
Asphalt Urban GT looks very good, runs at a fast, smooth frame rate (somethig EA can't do on XBOX with their racing games eg. NASCAR 2005), and gives a real feeling of speed. It is a pure arcade racer with no concessions to realism anywhere. The physics are pure arcade, made for fun and speed. Boost is earned by drifting and scaring other drivers with near misses like many other games. There is no damage modelling. It's a racing game not a crashing game.
Lots of great sport and racing cars. they look great, and feel right in comparison to each other given the simple physics. Lots of upgrades can be bought including racing bodies with close copies of real racing liveries. The Corvette has a yellow body that looks like the GMAC C5R of the American LeMans Series. The Morgan Aero 8 has a body green/silver livery from FIA N-GT class racing etc...
The cop chase mode is a nice diversion, driving the Lamborghini Gallardo painted up like the ones Lambo donated to the Italian Federal Highway Polizia in a publicity stunt. It's also good fun over the wireless link though it's only 1 on 1 and needs a cart for each player.
The tracks are well designed and look pretty good, though there are some silly things. There are tree sprites that you drive right through, lots of things to hit and get 'breakage' bonus boost like phione boothes and crates. There are car carrier 18 wheelers with no cars and the loading ramp down ala Carzy Taxi for you to jump up to the pixellated sky. It adds nothing to gameplay though. Collisions with the traffic result is spinout and lost speed. I would have preferred to have straight racing without the 'Urban' part.
The game engine doesn't understand banking which makes the oval speedway track pretty useless. It grates on the nerves seeing the outside tires penetrate the road surface up to their lugnuts. And in Hong Kong they have the traffic driving on the wrong side of the road.
Still, the gameplay and fun is there. I played it all the way through until I collected 3 of every car in every racing livery and multiple paint schemes. Finshing unlocks a MotoGP type motorcycle, and an F1 car which oddly then qualifies in every racing series. The Gameloft F1 is a sure winner in the Sport Utility Vehicle race for instance.
Otherwise, the game is structured very much like Gran Turismo 3. Race series with a theme, winning some gets you prize cars, like Skyline R-34, or a Corvette which can be sold or upgraded as you will.
This is the 1st real game machine title from a company which has made it's living shoehorning titles into cellphones and PDA's until now. I'm very well pleased with this game and have gotten more than 40 hours of playing time out of it. Not bad for under 30 clams. Just don't compare NDS titles to XBOX or PSP games.
Create an Account
Member Login
