Gameloft’s Asphalt 5 ($6.99, iTunes link) is a glorious, lightning fast, and graphically impressive racing game, designed with thrills rather than accuracy in mind.
The game plays like most racers, and as you play through the multinational levels, you gain money for winning and use it to buy more cars and tweak their performance. There’s also a leveling system, which controls which cars you can buy. There are more than 30 cars and motorbikes to unlock, each with their own play style and stats. As you level up, you also unlock girls, who give you a boost in one way or another. Though it would have been nice to see a guy thrown in there too, just to even things out.
The controls are absolutely perfect for the iPhone in their default mode. You steer with tilt, and the only buttons you have to worry about are boost and brake. The steering is very touchy, so it is easy to oversteer, and go pinballing between sides of the course. Not exactly true to life, but more fun that way. You earn more cash through crazy stunts too, in a similar way to the Burnout games. So driving people off the road, narrowly avoiding traffic, smashing street signs all earn you money. However, totaling your car costs you a lot, both in race time and money, so avoid incoming traffic.
Each course has multiple game modes, including standard races, time trials and police mode (very hard, where you have to run a certain number of cars off the course before completing three laps). In fact, the police in the game are a major source of grief. Much faster and bigger than you, ramming one off the course only brings more of their friends. Apparently, if you “drive safely” for a while, they’ll disappear, but where’s the fun in that? Play is exacting, and you need to be on your toes to get gold. You’ll be getting very familiar with the courses, as you’ll probably play them over and over and over to get past each challenge.
Multiplayer is offered over bluetooth or WiFi, but no one I know has the game, so no chance in testing it out.
As with every thing, there are some negatives. The graphical intensity was a bit much for my iPhone 3G, and occasionally during the race the frame rate would drop badly, leaving me careening into a wall and losing position. The controls are good, but very finicky. They require a light touch. Also, the game is filled with loading screens, some of which take a huge amount of time. Every level takes a long load, so you have to twiddle your thumbs while it thinks. Repeatedly. There’s also slow down in switching between cars at the garage, which is annoying when trying to get a feel for the differences between models. Also, I’ve had the game crash on me badly, twice. Finally, there’s the price. Yes, $7 is high, but it’s a very professional game, and worth it.
Conclusion:
Asphalt 5 is fast, crazy, and most of all fun. It has its downsides, like graphical slowdown, long loading times, and steep learning curve, but it’s gorgeous, crazy, and you’ll want to keep playing. We highly recommend this game, and give it a 7.7/10.