Welcome to Modojo, 
Asphalt Urban GT Review
Written by Robert Falcon on Wednesday, May 25, 2005
Sweet amount of licensed cars lend to the racing realism.
Very slow loading time, and could have been a bit smoother.
It seems that Gameloft is eager to start a gaming franchise of their very own, fashioned after Namco's legendary Ridge Racer series and maybe even some old-school Sega racing games. Their idea is to simply provide a racing interface that everyone can get into, and then let them step on the pedal to the metal. Let the customizers go crazy somewhere else, they said, this is time for just letting the wheel spin madly around the turns and keeping the miles per hour well near the triple digit range. Well, their idea worked somewhat on the Nintendo DS with the release of Asphalt Urban GT, but what of the cell phone edition? Well, something got lost along the way - the speed that the game requires in order to be unbeatable.
The game features a variety of sweet licensed cars to choose from, including some Lamborghini models and the awesome Ford GT, and allows you to take on nine different tracks, each flowing with their own little details and full set of traffic. So it's loaded up on features, that's for sure. But somewhere in the translation, the important element of just jumping right in got lost.
First you got the game's loading time. Slow. I mean "ride a turtle on its back" slow. It takes forever for a race to start up. Then, when it does, the game really doesn't go as fast as it did over on the DS, chugging along to a boring frame rate and hitting detail problems, particularly whenever the road stops going straight. Some of the details look good but the general sense of speed isn't present. Even when you kick in a boost, you can't tell if it's taking effect unless you happen to take a glance down at the speedometer.
The game still plays alright, but could've been a lot smoother in coming over to the wireless circuit. Sometimes cornering and taking on the cops (the game's most exciting part) can be a little tougher than expected, especially when all you want to do is drive away clean. I also noticed that there really wasn't too much difference in how each car handles, lacking a distinctiveness that would have probably pushed it away from the game's graphical failures. As is, it just adds to the overall letdown.
If you're up for a portable racing game, Asphalt Urban GT falls somewhere in the middle of the list. Its problems are just too great to ignore, despite the valiant attempts by Gameloft to try and cram as much as they could into an arcade-like experience. But when you try to overcook your favorite dish out of impression, it's bound to burn itself out.. Maybe it's best to stick to basics, and hopefully we'll see that return in Urban GT 2.
