The second game that caught my attention from the many that I tried was Asphalt 8 Airborne. Also massively popular, Asphalt 8 brought high quality graphics and multi-player possibilities to my discovery of gaming. This time the platform I used was an iPad whose accelerometer is key to the game play. Users race exotic hypercars around dramatic landscapes by turning the iPad as one would turn a steering wheel. Users begin with a very basic family car and by collecting credit points can unlock new and more desirable cars and courses. Having now unlocked every track, every challenge and the majority of cars available, I can’t deny that this game too remained appealing long after the time needed to collect the data for this review.
The principal attractiveness of Asphalt 8 is visual. The cars look fantastic, the landscapes look fantastic and the physics of the game allow gravity defying jumps and spins to be achieved within the game space. Changes of camera angle, ultra slow motion cutaways when you run another car off the road and landscape features that gets damaged when you crash into them add to the visual appeal of the game. This game has, by far, the most sophisticated graphics of any mobile device game I have played.
Highly interactive and intuitive car control is the second stand out feature of the game. Rotating the screen on which you are observing the action may sound like a recipe for nausea but the implementation of this feature is done so smoothly that after a short time a player is able to differentiate between the cornering profiles of different cars and adjust their approach to a corner (via slight differences in rotation) accordingly. Instant feedback from a user’s motion is an essential feature here and makes the user feel more involved in the game play than if they were simply pressing a button for left and another for right.
The continuing opportunities to obtain new, better and even more exclusive cars in which to race and further game challenges to race them in provides long term users with a continuing incentive to keep playing. Like Candy Crush Saga the game challenges begin with a simplicity that allows almost universal access to the game play and leads a user through levels that increase in difficulty at a pace that accurately matches a users personal skill development. My first lap of the Tokyo street circuit saw me endlessly ping pong the slow family hatchback car from crash barrier to lamppost. Now I can serenely powerslide the latest limited edition Ferrari between the legs of gigantic dancing robot or barrel roll a Lamborghini through the exhaust cloud of a launching space shuttle, whilst collecting power-ups in mid air. This personal skill development is, in many ways, as satisfying for the user as landing your impossible 200 metre jump with pinpoint precision of the bonnet of a rival’s Aston Martin.
Asphalt 8 offers a very popular multi-player option. Users who have exhausted the in-game challenges, or simply prefer to play against other gamers rather than the computer itself, can race each other virtually. Provided their device has a stable Internet connection, the feedback from other users is very responsive and frustrating lags and glitches in the game play are rare. The ability to race up to eight random strangers or a group of friends over a local network adds a social dimension to the game that Candy Crush achieves to a lesser extent through Facebook integration.
The principal attractiveness of Asphalt 8 is visual. The cars look fantastic, the landscapes look fantastic and the physics of the game allow gravity defying jumps and spins to be achieved within the game space. Changes of camera angle, ultra slow motion cutaways when you run another car off the road and landscape features that gets damaged when you crash into them add to the visual appeal of the game. This game has, by far, the most sophisticated graphics of any mobile device game I have played.
Highly interactive and intuitive car control is the second stand out feature of the game. Rotating the screen on which you are observing the action may sound like a recipe for nausea but the implementation of this feature is done so smoothly that after a short time a player is able to differentiate between the cornering profiles of different cars and adjust their approach to a corner (via slight differences in rotation) accordingly. Instant feedback from a user’s motion is an essential feature here and makes the user feel more involved in the game play than if they were simply pressing a button for left and another for right.
The continuing opportunities to obtain new, better and even more exclusive cars in which to race and further game challenges to race them in provides long term users with a continuing incentive to keep playing. Like Candy Crush Saga the game challenges begin with a simplicity that allows almost universal access to the game play and leads a user through levels that increase in difficulty at a pace that accurately matches a users personal skill development. My first lap of the Tokyo street circuit saw me endlessly ping pong the slow family hatchback car from crash barrier to lamppost. Now I can serenely powerslide the latest limited edition Ferrari between the legs of gigantic dancing robot or barrel roll a Lamborghini through the exhaust cloud of a launching space shuttle, whilst collecting power-ups in mid air. This personal skill development is, in many ways, as satisfying for the user as landing your impossible 200 metre jump with pinpoint precision of the bonnet of a rival’s Aston Martin.
Asphalt 8 offers a very popular multi-player option. Users who have exhausted the in-game challenges, or simply prefer to play against other gamers rather than the computer itself, can race each other virtually. Provided their device has a stable Internet connection, the feedback from other users is very responsive and frustrating lags and glitches in the game play are rare. The ability to race up to eight random strangers or a group of friends over a local network adds a social dimension to the game that Candy Crush achieves to a lesser extent through Facebook integration.