Despite its poor graphics and irritating glitches, Asphalt 3D is a fun, enjoyable racer thanks to its cheesy quality.
Features
.First 3D game for the Asphalt series
.Really Deep Career Mode with drifting, cash, and running from the police.
.17 tracks from real life locations such as Aspen, Los Angles, Madrid, and Tokyo
.Many cars and bikes to unlock
.Minigames to play
.Streetpass
Asphalt 3D appeals to me because it has an arcade like quality to it. The 17 tracks contain shortcuts, ramps, crashes, and plenty of nitro. You can gain nitro by drifting, and it's awesome when you ompletely unleash your turbo; the screen turns red as you're going at high speeds! The tracks go from Aspen to Tokyo, To Los Angles and Hawaii, My favorite is the African Cape Town location, with its exotic sunset background and scenery.
What really makes this game enjoyable is the deep career mode. Packed with tournaments and challenges, it adds tons of replay value and challenge to get two stars on each challenge! I love the cheesy nature of this game, with cars that apear to completely flip over, badly written dialogue, and cheesy techno music. It's also really hilarious when you see a police car flip high in the air off of ramps! Getting in the top three can be a challenge in the later tracks, but it's not so bad. Gaining experience points allows you to level up, buy sponsers, car parts, and even new cars such as an Ashton Martin! The controls are good thanks the Drifting feature, and you can even control how much nitro you use!
There are also some minigames you can play. The drifting mode is great because you can finish in SIXTH PLACE and still win (all you have to do is the required amount of drifting points). Some challenges require you not to use repair items and powerups, and even use shortcuts in every lap, and the variety is impressive for a game such as this. In that case, its still in some of the minigames, such as ghost racing, which disappointingly does NOT save extra files or even lets you just race by yourself. Viligante has you take out your opponents, and it's my favorite, if only because crashing into other cars is oh so satisfying! Running from the police requires you not to get caught by the cops, who pretty much ruin EVERY VIDEO GAME THAT THEY'RE IN!! Oh well, at least you can crash into them, but escaping them is extremely rare (only happened to me once). All things considered, these challanges are fun to play. I like how the Time Trial modes are two laps instead of three!
However, Asphalt 3D is also flawed as hell. The framerate is extremely poor, evident by the fact that when in the time trial modes, the framerate is FASTER!!! I hate the camera angles when you get big air, and I would prefer an option to turn them off if I could. Too bad! Glitches such as bumping into roads off of jumps, losing speed after bumping into a building but still gaining speed after you ge out of it, and cars that float like SPACESHIPS are present. Traffic is a horrible feature in this game, because when you crash into a car. you will immediately go from first to LAST, and you can NEVER get into first, let alne FIFTH!! Police cars will slow you down constantly, and some tracks contain four laps, adding to the misery. Finally, some of the later challenges just plain SUCK, such as the Cape Town Cash drifting challenge. I actually has to drive BACKWARDS TWO LAPS just to earn enough cash to pass it, and it's an ordeal! Amazingly though, this game, even with those flaws, holds ups really well!
The graphics as I've said are poor, but I love the digitized backgrounds, especially Las Vegas's background! The electropop music is cheesy (in a good way), and one of the songs sounds like "I Wanna Go" by Britney Spears! That one song that says "I just fake it" is annoying though, The main menu music is really good though! The sound effects are adequate, but nothing spectacular. I laughed at the dialouge, which says lines like "put the die in beach diet," "Have you seen the Chariot races," and a lot more poorly written stuff!
Despite its poor graphics and irritating glitches, Asphalt 3D is a fun, enjoyable racer, thanks to its cheesy quality. It also has many other frustrating flaws with it, but I personally enjoyed this. ecause it reminds me of games such as San Francisco Rush, Excitebots, and Need For Speed Underground 2! If you can stomach the choppy framerate, you'll like this game, Others should get Ridge Racer 3D if they want some pure arcade fun, but for a game like this, it's not half bad!
Total Playtime: 17:18
Gameplay: 7/10: Flaws abound, but the core gameplay is fun and shortcuts (such as Flying over a bridge and gong through a tree) also abound!
Graphics: 4/10: Backgrounds like Miami's look digitized and cool to me, and the roads are shiney, but the framerate is poor and the cars look like they belong on an N64 title! Time Trial mode has a much faster and smoother framerate!
Sound: 7/10: Cheesy Electropop soundtrack, badly written dialogue, my type of thing! Sound effects are average, though.
Replay Value: 8/10: Career Mode is very deep, but frustration is everywhere in this game. Still, if you can take it, you'll enjoy Asphalt 3D.
Final Score: 7.2/10 (C-)