The circuits themselves have a bright and colourful look, with lots going on as you race past buildings, signs, and junctions. That doesn't mean you won't power slide the car on loose gravel (because half of the fun of Asphalt 7 is realising that the power slide, also known as the drift, is the key to a fast lap time), but it does mean that you can balance the car in the curves, bring her round the corners without bleeding off too much speed, and can twitch steer around other cars on the streets of the cities you drive around. With the ability to make small corrections or large turns, it's accurate and has little lag. Which is where the accelerometer based steering comes in. To be honest, these are good for the first few levels, but you're going to need to have more precise controls over your car to make it round the courses faster than the more powerful cars. Gameloft provides three control options for steering, with an on-screen steering wheel or large virtual buttons if you want to have touch-screen steering, making up two of them. It works well, and it's nice to see true online multiplayer make it to Xbox Live and Windows Phone (honestly I thought that after the N-Gage I would never see that on a Nokia gaming device again). Offering you multiplayer over both your local wi-fi connection, and the cellular connection, you'll set up a multiplayer room, decide the type of race, and wait for everyone else to gather. The third game mode provides you with a multi-player environment, and Asphalt 7 is an Xbox Live title that starts to get this right (it's just a shame it wasn't followed through by other titles during this year). Nevertheless it's good to see there is some variety on display here. These keep the game varied and help extend the life of the title, although at heart they are all asking you to be fast and accurate in your driving. As well as the straight ahead 'beat all the other cars', you have more esoteric options which include 'beat the set time without crashing', 'drift a certain distance before the time runs out', or 'destroy as many opponents as you can'. A dedicated player might just be able to finish this without any extra purchases, but it would be a close run thing.Ĭareer mode will see you presented with various circuits and challenges as you work through the title, while Free Play lets you set up a single race with your choice of car tier (how powerful the cars are in the selection), the location, and the style of race. With a bit of repetition in the races, you'll be able to grind out just enough money, so Asphalt 7 is not a 'must buy the IAP's' which is good to know. I doubt you'll be surprised to know that you'll never have quite enough stars or dollars from your racing, and the Gameloft designers will be tempting you to use the in-app purchasing to raise the funds for your automotive empire. Well you can pick up the dollars as you drive - they tend to litter the circuits as you drive around - and as you play through the career mode of the game, winning races will reward you with the stars. Naturally you'll want to know how to get these valuable currencies. These can be used to buy upgrades to your cars, or new cars to add to your collection. Through smart driving in the various selectable challenges, you can earn the two currencies in the game - Asphalt Dollars and Asphalt Stars. There are 60 cars to drive, but not all of them are available as you first open the game. You have a judicious amount of nitro to apply a burst of acceleration that can be refilled with pick-ups around the driving courses, and there are countless 'impossible' jumps around the circuits which are 'based on' actual locations rather than replicating an exact environment.Īt its core, Asphalt 7 is a collecting game. Gameloft's long-running multi-platform series of driving games under the Asphalt banner are all clearly under the arcade banner, and unashamedly lean towards adrenaline and quick reactions. Gamers have moved on now, and while you still have the distinction between arcade and realism, this has tended to move towards the challenges set up by the game designers, the environment, what sort of effect crash has, and if you have the mysterious 'nitro/turbo' option in your car. When you sat down to develop your driving game you either went for a realistic 'simulator' type game, or you went for an arcade like smash and grab with fast moving graphics and a car that had 'left' or 'right' as the steering inputs. Gameloft's second Asphalt game on Windows Phone and the Xbox Live banner (after Asphalt 5 - for some reason Asphalt 6 has been skipped over) is a stunning tour de force of fast graphics, accurate controls, and rather a lot of adrenaline. Amazingly, Asphalt 7 has slipped under our collective reviewing radars.
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