Asphalt 4: Elite Racing for N-Gage Review
Asphalt 3 was one of the best-selling N-Gage games of 2008, and the Asphalt series as a whole goes right back to the original gen N-Gage. Can Asphalt 4 live up to the standards of this legacy?
Asphalt 4: Elite Racing for N-Gage
Gameplay
Let's get this out of the way: Asphalt 4 is practically the same as Asphalt 3. The gameplay is identical, as are the bonuses, point pickups, game modes and other elements. The only real differences are the tracks and some of the cars.
For those who haven't played Asphalt 3, Asphalt 4 is an arcade racer with absolutely no regard whatsoever for physics or realism, where even the tiniest acceleration supposedly launches you forward at incredible speeds, and you can fire up to three "nitro" boosters at once. It's basically supposed to be the exciting car chases from films with all the boring stuff cut out.
The emphasis is on earning money all the way through, and finishing with a fast time doesn't actually count for much. Even finishing first only has a limited impact on your overall score, as long as you finish in the top three. Like a lot of racers Asphalt 4 uses a "rubber band" system to make sure you can never be far ahead of your opponents, so even if you think you've outrun them they seem to creep back in front of you almost immediately.
There are six tracks to unlock in all, each depicting a different city, and you can also unlock a variety of different power-ups, cars and bikes. It's quite difficult to tell if the power-ups are having any effect though, and faster cars don't necessarily win you races either thanks to the rubber band playing style.
As well as straightforward races, there are other playing modes such as destroying as many cars as possible, earning as much money as possible, catching the leader of the pack, and finishing first in a duel. These add to the variety of the game and are very welcome, as you can try a different playing style when you get bored of races.
There is also something new to Asphalt 4: Bluetooth multiplayer. This lets you race against another player within a 10 metre radius who also has a compatible phone and a purchased copy of Asphalt 4, with the person finishing first being declared the winner. If you're in a hurry you can play a quick race (which has a random track), but you can also choose a specific vehicle and specific track.
For those who want to know about these things:
Asphalt 4's tracks are: Dubai, Los Angeles, Monte Carlo, New York, Paris, Shanghai.
Asphalt 4's cars are: Aston Martin DB9, Aston Martin DBS, Aston Martin Vantage, BMW 24M, BMW M3, BMW M6, Bugatti Veyron, Chevrolet Corvette, Corvette ZRI, Ferrari Enzo, Ferrari 599 GTB, Ferrari F430 Scuderia, Ferrari F430 Spider, Ford GT, Ford Mustang FR500, Lotus Exige S, Mercedes CLK, Mercedes SL63, Mercedes SLK55 AMG, Mini Cooper S, Nissan 350Z, Nissan GT-R, Nissan Skyline GTR, RUF RGT.
Asphalt 4's bikes are: Ducati 1098, Ducatti Monster 696, Kawasaki 21000, Kawasaki ZX-10 R.
Graphics & Sound
Asphalt 4 is fairly jerky, and the game stutters a fair bit. Of course mobile phones aren't consoles, but if you look at other current N-Gage games such as System Rush Evolution or Crash Bandicoot Nitro Kart they both manage to have much smoother graphics without sacrificing the quality of the scenery (especially SRE). Even Asphalt 3 feels a bit smoother than Asphalt 4. Asphalt 4's graphics seem to be more jerky on Bluetooth multiplayer, and this makes the Bluetooth game much less playable.
The music is the usual techno-ish hiphop-ish mess, with touches of soft rock here and there. None of it is memorable, and it's a shame they've ditched the classic Misirilou that brightened up the menu screen of Asphalt 3. Sound effects are the usual digitised tyre screeches and police sirens.
N-Gage Arena
Arena consists entirely of score rankings uploads, which is based entirely on your total amount of money earned. As Arena cheats and hackers seem to be capable of entering stupidly high sums of money in their savegames, these rankings may quickly become worthless.
There is no other Arena mode, no shadow racing, no multiplayer.
TV Test
Some N-Gage-compatible phones (e.g. Nokia N79, N82, N85, N95, N95 8GB, N96) have a TV Out feature which lets you connect the phone to a television set. This can be used for playing N-Gage games, or for any other phone function.
All N-Gage phones are compatible with Bluetooth keyboards that use the HID Bluetooth standard, and such a keyboard can be used to control games or any other phone function. You can also use Nintendo Wii controllers with N-Gage games by installing mobiPad on your phone.
As with most 3D games, being scaled up to full screen size makes everything rather pixelly. However, it is still pretty much as playable as on the small screen, and if you're looking for a bit of mindless party fun this might be okay.
Overall
Asphalt 4 is a caricature of racing games: it's put so many special effects and "extreme" features into the game that it's become a bit of a mess. The speedometer might say you're going at 200 km/h but it feels more like 2 km/h. The deliberate blurring that happens at high speeds just reminds you how slow the game is.
And this isn't a hardware problem either. Crash Bandicoot Nitro Kart and System Rush Evolution are on the same platform as Asphalt 4, but they have much smoother graphics and they're more fun to play. Why couldn't Asphalt 4 be as good? Gameloft have now had over a year to get used to the new N-Gage, so why do their games still feel so jerky compared to other publishers' titles? Is Gameloft continuing to use some substandard multiplatform development tool which slows things down?
As it stands, this game feels dangerously close to shovelware, but people will probably buy this in vast numbers as Asphalt 3 was such a huge hit. What this might mean is that there's a lot of demand for arcade racers which so far only the Asphalt series satisfies on N-Gage. Perhaps Nokia should take a hint and do a much better arcade racer themselves, maybe a sequel to their own highly-acclaimed Glimmerati? Go on Nokia, give Bugbear a call and order a next gen version!
This isn't a disaster by any means, a lot of things in Asphalt 4 are good: the variety of playing modes for example, and its smash-everything mentality can be quite fun if you get into the right frame of mind. But they're pretty much just the good things from Asphalt 3. The whole game is the same but with different tracks, some different cars and a rather unplayable Bluetooth mode. It feels like Gameloft is repackaging the same product and trying to sell it all over again.
If you're looking for a racer on N-Gage try Crash Bandicoot Nitro Kart or System Rush Evolution. You'll have a lot more fun, and you'll also be sending a signal to Gameloft that they can't get away with being so lazy.
AAN Score: 68%
Review Discussion
And lastly, what about the utter boredom of the game, which is mainly caused by the linear gameplay? You cannot even drift as long as you're not in a curve!
A ripoff of a poor game (Asphalt 3) for 8£ does not deserve more than 25%, otherwise ONE for N-Gage should get at least 130%. You see, I think you should set the bar according to existing titles on the platform and leave room for extraordinary titles. 68% means, that future games can be only a third better than asphalt 3, whereas there will surely be racing titles such as need for speed which hopefully will raise the bar. Gameloft are resting on their image as one of the biggest and most successful mobile games developers and since they earn enough money they don't have to take care of the quality anymore. It's not that I'm a games geek, otherwise I'd buy me a PSP for sure, it's just that I can't stand lazy companies gaining a lot of money for intolerable products and it is unfair towards other excellent developers such as infinite dreams, ideaworks3d or digital legends that Gameloft realises the biggest profit on the n-gage platform and thus pushes the other developers aside.
I'm not looking forward at all to next Gameloft titles such as Real Football or Prince of Persia, as they will barely differ from the already available sis versions.
That was a fantastic game - should have sold bucketloads.
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Originally Posted by emerher
Finally someone says how bad Gameloft games actually are.
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| 68% means, that future games can be only a third better than asphalt 3, whereas there will surely be racing titles such as need for speed which hopefully will raise the bar. Gameloft are resting on their image as one of the biggest and most successful mobile games developers and since they earn enough money they don't have to take care of the quality anymore. |
But I think its not only Gameloft or N-gage, there's some kind of internal politics at Nokia involved. Look at the original Tomb Raider for Ngage, the current symbian version of Tomb Raider Anniversary looks like a stripped down Java game in front of the original.
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Originally Posted by Unregistered
funny how Gameloft is making amazing games for Iphone/Ipod touch platform, and this kind of crap to ngage
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| But I think its not only Gameloft or N-gage, there's some kind of internal politics at Nokia involved. Look at the original Tomb Raider for Ngage, the current symbian version of Tomb Raider Anniversary looks like a stripped down Java game in front of the original. |
The Asphalt games have got nothing to do with Nokia either, they're third party games too.
Third party means that a totally separate company develops, publishes and owns the game in its entireity, Nokia has got no control at all over the contents of a third party game.
Nokia make most S60 handsets, but Nokia have got nothing to do with most S60 software. Blaming Nokia for a bad Symbian game would be like blaming Microsoft for a poor Windows game or Apple for a poor Macintosh game.
| Finally someone says how bad Gameloft games actually are. But why does Asphalt 4 get 68%? 25% Would be realistic, |
The problem is that this is pretty much the same game as Asphalt 3, without any significant improvement (the Bluetooth multiplayer is there, but it isn't very good).
Gameloft have had a year to make their graphics engine less jerky, and other publishers on N-Gage have much smoother 3D graphics right from the start, so it definitely isn't a hardware problem. For example if you compare Gameloft's Dogz to EA's Sims 2 Pets on N-Gage, Sims 2 Pets has MUCH smoother and nicer 3D, even though Dogz came out after Sims 2 Pets. Why? Because EA bothered to use a good 3D engine, while Gameloft didn't bother.
| Gameloft are resting on their image as one of the biggest and most successful mobile games developers and since they earn enough money they don't have to take care of the quality anymore. |
Unless gamers stop buying derivative games, publishers will keep making them because it's easy money. Reviews don't really matter to games companies, it's sales that matter.
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Originally Posted by Tzer2
Nokia make most S60 handsets, but Nokia have got nothing to do with most S60 software. Blaming Nokia for a bad Symbian game would be like blaming Microsoft for a poor Windows game or Apple for a poor Macintosh game.
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| But we can blame Nokia for keeping the standards for N-gage games so low, when it was launched developers were asked to ensure that the games should be able to run on all N-gage supported handsets and strangely the announced lineup also included the 220mhz processor based N73. |
As I said in the review, all other publishers on N-Gage have managed much smoother graphics on N-Gage than Gameloft. They're all running on the same hardware, but Gameloft's games look much more jerky, so the only explanation is that Gameloft's 3D engine stinks.
And the problems in Asphalt 4 go beyond the graphics, the problem is that they've cloned Asphalt 3 right down to the same point pickups and same unlockable game modes. If they'd tried to make things a bit new, a bit different, then at least you'd feel the sequel was worth doing. But they didn't really change anything except the tracks, so it feels like a rip-off. Even if the graphics had been perfect, it would still feel like a rip-off to see the same game being re-sold as a sequel.
Incidentally, regarding the reference hardware, that's not going to be forever, they do intend to move the hardware on as phones develop. For example the next SDK will have support for graphics hardware, and the N97 is (presumably) going to have touchscreen gaming, two things which are impossible on the N73. I think the N-Gage platform will gradually develop like PC gaming has, with no specific generations but hardware gradually becoming more powerful over the years.
| Some of the Nseries handsets have enough graphics might to challenge PS1 or PSP games, don't know why Nokia is letting it go waste? |
The Nintendo DS has outsold the PSP several times over, despite the PSP being graphically far superior, so most gamers clearly want something else apart from the best graphics.
And this again, in connection with the fact that the market share of nseries phones (ngage compatible phones) is tiny compared to the series40 product line (ngage incompatible phones), shows that nokia will not bother raising the bar for ngage games. A new sdk doesn't necessarily mean the developers (especially gameloft) will actually use the benefits. Ngage is more of another marketplace for developers than a platform on its own.
Just remember that it is not really the N73 that is holding it back (since the client never officially came out for it).. but the NEWER hardware is just as bad. Look at the N81 or even the N96 (it even had CPU speed cut back.. without 3D Acceleration!).
Ngage is such a joke of an effort..
Games support? Well.. whats been out in the last couple of months??
hmmm...