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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?

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%

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