Asphalt Injection Review

If you have ever experienced one of the Asphalt games in the past you already know how underwhelming they historically have been. The original was actually not that bad for an N-Gage title, but all subsequent iterations have proven to be budget quality at a full retail price. Does Asphalt Injection buck the trend?

Asphalt Injection is a straight-up, unapologetic arcade racer. While it has some light customization elements, the focus here is clearly on quick races rather than authentic, real-to-life mechanics. Whether you will have the least bit of interest in Asphalt Injection depends on if you are more of a Ridge Racer fan or a Gran Turismo fan. The latter should look elsewhere.

The problem with Asphalt Injection is that it is not a particularly good arcade racing game. You don’t get the sense of speed that would make the game exciting. Instead it feels like you are going at varying degrees between slow and somewhat fast. Even though the speedometer says that you are going 300 mph in a Honda sedan that your grandmother probably drives, don’t believe it. Even more frustrating is the fact that things like turbo seem to have no real effect on your position in the race.

Surprisingly, Asphalt Injection has a decent amount of cars to choose from. Whether you want to race in the aforementioned Honda, a BMW or a Ford Mustang, Asphalt Injection has you covered. The same cannot be said for tracks, though, as there are only fifteen of them. The game has a ton of events to choose from, as well as a variety of game modes, yet racing on the same tracks gets old really fast.

While other arcade racers like Burnout will dazzle graphically, Asphalt Injection merely earns a passing grade. Certainly it is a major improvement from last year’s atrocious Asphalt 3D, but it is hard to say that they pushed the Vita to its limit. Worse yet, the sound will annoy the hell out of you. For whatever reason the developers chose to have an obnoxious announcer spouting off lines that are better suited for arcade racing games from the 90s.

While Asphalt Injection is a marked improvement from past games it still has a long way to go in order to catch the competition. The fact that you can play essentially the same game – including identical tracks – on the iPhone for $.99 should infuriate anyone that decided to buy Injection for about thirty times that amount. If you have an iPhone you might consider buying Asphalt, but Vita gamers should definitely pass up Injection.