Review: Asphalt 3 Street Rules

This is the 3^rd in the series, the original was fantastic but needed improving – The second once again was fantastic and brought us a wave of new features, new cars and even bikes – and now we have the 3^rd in the series. Is it any good? Well if I gave you that answer there would be no point continuing the review now would there? Read on…

My first impressions are good, the menus are simple but it does endure a slight “Cheap Gangster” effect to it – which does put me off but not all that much, but there easy to navigate and you will never get lost within the game.

So when we start the game (Arcade Mode) we are presented with a world view, and yellow blips showing us the different cities which each have 4 different races per city respectively. There are different types of race mode there’s

- Race (Where you race a few opponents)

- Cop Chase (Where you are the legal side of things)

- Duel (Race a CPU opponent for a wager from $5,000 – $10,000 and $15,000)

- Beat ‘Em All (Were you destroy as many cars as possible to win)

- Cash Attack (Destroy everything in your path, Cars, Scenery you name it destroy it)

This is a nice selection of race modes, so you will never have a excuse to be bored of the game.

When racing, you got a set amount of CPU players racing you, the AI is fantastic for a mobile game, There “Competitive” when you get closer to winning, but the game is still far too easy which to me was a problem on the first 2 – but this game doesn’t last too long. The races are rich, and full of excitement and very deep for a mobile racer, this is something I expected on the DS or PSP, not a mobile phone. The racing side is more-arcade-racing and is no-where near “Realistic”, crashes and everything else are not realistic either which is good because it’s a mobile phone game not Gran Turismo 5 which adds to the fun factor.

The Controls for the game are simple enough, but it depends what way you play it, either Landscape with the Media keys (or gaming keys for you N81 Users) or Portrait where you use the Number 5 for NOS. The Media keys that are used (N95) are the Play and Stop buttons which are A and B respectively. A (Stop Button) is the NOS button, and the D Pad for moving about – If you do not wish to use the Media keys you can just use the Up button on the D Pad or Centre key so there’s quite a few control schemes to be used.

Graphically Asphalt 3 is mediocre, Its good for a mobile which don’t use the 3D chip (N73 etc) the reflections on the cars, the detail of the cars etc are fantastic but when you think of what some devices can achieve (N95, N93 with the 3D Chip) and the developers aren’t using the full potential of them is kind off disappointing but for a overall experience its mediocre, the frame rate could be better but the scenery detail, level detail and cars etc make it a very pretty game to play. When using NOS you get a very nice blur effect, it’s a basic effect but really adds to the appearance and excitement of the game giving it that “Sense of speed” feel which is good for a mobile.

The sounds are disappointing; the menu music is the old classic pulp Fiction theme tune which I don’t think suits the genre of the game. The in-game sounds of the engine are good, but far too repetitive and the music for when you race isn’t what you would call “race music” and it sounds cheap, a definite downgrade from the licensed music from the second Asphalt.

Unlike its predecessors Asphalt 3 doesn’t include a multi-player option, which is very unusual seeing as the first 2 did include this option. Its very disappointing to see no Multi player, and more disappointing when this is for a next-gen platform which should be able to handle real time multi player over the net, yet all we have is Rankings – And there rather poor too.

Overall Asphalt 3 is a slight improvement from its predecessors, but also a downgrade in some areas from the original 2 Asphalts. With the lack online multiplayer and local multiplayer makes it very disappointing for the hardcore user, but the single player is rich, yet still a little too short – Its not designed for the hardcore gamer, but still a very fun game to play.

I myself, would recommend this game to anyone – Its fun, and can be challenging and certainly a good game for the launch of the Next Gen N-Gage but for the owners of the Original 2, will be disappointed – We all expected so much more.