Ridge Racer DS blasted on to the DS scene long before the system launched, and received a lot of hype from the media (and gamers) everywhere. Featuring a landmark race game license, unique touch-screen controls, and some of the best visuals on the DS, Ridge Racer was sure to blow away its only competition - Asphalt: Urban GT. A port of an N-Gage game, Asphalt seemed to come out of nowhere, created by Gameloft, previously known among gamers only as a cell-phone-based game developer. Against all odds, Asphalt: Urban GT topped Ridge Racer in the sales charts by a long shot. But did Asphalts buyers make the right decision? Is Urban GT a killer DS launch title, or a cheap port of an unknown game from a system nobody cares about?
The gameplay in Asphalt is like a collection of all the most memorable gameplay elements from popular racing titles available today. The game features a decent dose of Gran Turismo-worthy car licenses, during-race cut-scenes and tuning kits straight from Need For Speed Underground, and a pseudo-Burnout turbo boost system.
While Arcade mode allows you to race through the games many tracks in normal races or a number of other driving events, the heart of the game lies in Evolution mode. In Evolution you start off with a Hummer, and must win your first race to begin your journey through dozens of tournaments spanning the globe, upgrading cars as you go. It’s a pretty simple concept, and not a terribly original one at that, with fairly simple and unoriginal gameplay to match. Each track is based on a famous real-life locale, and be it a city or an entire country, they’re all pretty short. The racing action is very arcade-oriented. Avoiding traffic and mastering tricky U-turns is vital to beating your seven opponents to the finish line. Smashing through roadside benches and hot dog stands, as well as performing near misses and drifts will earn you extra turbo boosts, which you can unleash at any time.
Unfortunately the turbo boost system is very unbalanced, and lacks refinement. Smashing into traffic or swinging out of control often seems to earn you more turbo points then zooming down the wrong side of the road, splitting oncoming traffic and missing every vehicle by an inch. Vandalizing public property is fun, of course, but seems more barbaric than slick.
If all the races in Asphalt (and there’s a lot of them) were of the more traditional breed, the game would surely be a rather dull experience. But luckily the developers had the sense to add a variety of different racing events to each and every tournament. In fact, only about half of the races are normal 3 lap beat-your-opponents-to-the-checkered-flag events. The rest of your racing time will be spent in Golden races, two-man duels or Radar races. Golden races begin like normal races, though at every checkpoint the losing driver is disqualified. To win these events you must make it to the head of the pack before 8 checkpoints have passed by. Self-descriptive duels are two-lap, two-man races. To enter a duel race you must put forward a good wad of cash. If you win, you get almost double your original bid; if you lose, you lose it all. In Radar races you must race through a small portion of track and make it through a line of radar over a certain speed. To make things tough, usually the radar will be placed right after a tricky turn. Assuming you win them, duel races are by far the most profitable, while they’re also often the easiest (what’s with that?). Golden Races are easily the most tense, but also a fair bit harder than the normal races in their class. Radar races are usually the hardest, and are often insanely difficult compared to other races in the same tournaments. In the end, though, the fact that these events offset the difficulty level is of little concern, and most gamers will easily be able to overlook this problem to enjoy the diversity of races at hand.
Each main class is broken down into several tournaments. Each tournament is limited to a specific range of cars sorted by make, engine-type, class, or general design. Buying new cars is required to move up through the different classes and sometimes individual tournaments as well, though the occasional tournament will win you your next required ride. Even the best street racing game is nothing without cool cars. Asphalt is by no means the best in the genre, and thus its large array of licensed and upgradable vehicles helps it out all the more. There are 25 cars total, ranging from Hummers to Volkswagens to Lamborghinis . You can customize all the cars; everything from the shocks to the engine to the paint job can be tweaked if you have the extra cash. I never really bothered with many of the upgrades, and luckily, while they no doubt improve your chances of winning, they’re hardly required. The cars all handle pleasantly differently, and it’s always a treat to try out your newest ride.
Arcade mode offers a good dose of quick fun for the less committed player. Here’s a quick rundown on the different events offered in arcade mode. Instant Play mode will randomly pick you a single race of any variety. In a Cop Chase you must chase down street racers in a cop car. Time Attack events are simple races against time. Road Challenge events are rather similar to the tournaments in the main Evolution Mode, minus the large selection of vehicles. Quick Race pits you against the standard seven competitors in a single race on a track of your choice. Most of these modes are incredibly simple, yet solid, and like the rest of the game, devoid of originality. The one mode that’s particularly lacking is Cop Chase. In it, you must carefully target the suspect racers without touching them to pull them over. Its nowhere near as intuitive as the good ol fashioned ram ‘em off the road gameplay of older titles like Test Drive.
The main problem with the gameplay is the lack of originality, and the repetition of the tracks. There are a decent number of tracks in total, or at least there would be if Asphalt was only as long as your average racing game - but its not. Asphalt features plenty of tournaments adding up to dozens of individual races before the games end, which means you’ll race on every track far too many times. Other faults with the gameplay structure are all too obvious. Collision detection is poor, sending you bouncing unrealistically off rivaling vehicles, and occasionally hitting walls where you shouldn’t. Various abandoned vehicles block the road, usually sending you spinning harmlessly down the road, but occasionally you will jerk to a dead halt, forcing you to painstakingly reverse and start again from 0 miles per hour. Collecting turbo boosts is confusing. As I said before, the difficulty level is somewhat uneven and much of the game is far too easy. Upgrades are okay, but often hardly noticeable. The tracks are void of shortcuts or interesting gimmicks, and are disappointingly flat. And while the game would be even easier if you could save after every race, having to cap off each individual tournament in one sitting is hardly ideal for a handheld game.
Asphalt receives top marks for graphics as an N-Gage title, but the developers, Gameloft, hardly improved the visuals for the DS version. What were left with are very average DS graphics. In many ways the visuals are wonderfully detailed, and all the licensed vehicles are very accurately re-created in digital form. What’s more, the frame rate is superb as the game races by at impressive speeds. But unfortunately, the graphics simply lack the vital refinements that transforms a games visuals from mediocre to impressive. Grainy texturing, blocky edges and an excessive amount of polygonal objects are automatic giveaways that this was once an N-Gage game. Occasional pop-up only makes things worse. The colour palette is somewhat dull - mostly consisting of dark greys and reds - and the whole game looks rather dim, despite the DSs powerful backlight. Vehicles and other objects are often next to invisible, camouflaged in the colours of the tracks. Traffic vehicles vary little in design, and are all blocky to start with. Occasional cut scenes take the screen when you launch off a ramp or catch air at the top of a hill, but they tend to me more of an annoying distraction than anything else, seeing as they temporarily blind your view of the road ahead. Many of the tracks are exceptionally flat, which makes predicting upcoming turns a real pain. Relying on pop up arrows to determine which way to turn should have stayed with the GBA.
The bottom screen is simply used to display a standard race radar, so you can track your turns and watch your opponents progression. Occasionally words will pop up on the bottom of the lower screen to supply you with important information, like RISKY!!! etc. The bottom screen is obviously not put to the best of uses here, but really, who cares? Sure It would have been nice if the developers had implemented some intuitive new touch-screen feature, but I’m not complaining because they didn’t.
A half-decent handful of songs accompany Asphalts wide range of fairly realistic racing SFX. The songs during the menus are incredibly dull (the kind of elevator-music so overused in titles like Gran Turismo), but the music tracks during actual races are much better. The sound is by no means ground breaking, and will mostly go completely unnoticed, but serves its purpose as suitable background audio just fine.
While Ridge Racer DS received oh-so-much attention for its unique touch-screen controls, Asphalt Urban GT sticks with the basics, perhaps more than any other DS launch title. The touch screen cannot be used in the actual racing stages of the game, but only to move through various menus, in which case it hardly makes the task easier. B is acceleration, Y is brake. A is turbo boost. Less importantly, R is used to change views (there are three of them) and L is used to look behind you. While terribly unoriginal, the controls serve the game well.
This is the only place where Asphalt really stands out. While it may get repetitive after a while, Evolution mode is respectably long, and the game offers hours of Arcade mode action as well. Even after you complete all the races, there’ll still be cars to buy (and after that, to upgrade) providing you have the cash. Unfortunately the only way to earn said cash without selling your older cars is to win more races, which means even more repetition. The game is too easy for the first long while, and it might put off more experienced gamers, but the later stages can be truly intense, and will keep you playing a long, long time.
If I were to rate Asphalt based only on its technicalities, it would get a bellow average score. The graphics are so-so, the gameplay is repetitive and often dated, the difficultly level is uneven, the controls are unoriginal and the sound is pretty dull. Yet despite all this, I found myself playing Asphalt a lot. Unlocking new tracks and buying new cars is surprisingly rewarding, and the gameplay, while flawed, can also be intense and even addictive. While in no ways revolutionary, Asphalt offers a hearty dose of mostly solid driving action that racing fans will enjoy.
