Asphalt: Injection is a racing game for the PlayStation Vita developed by Gameloft and released in December 2011. Gameplay[edit] The game contain three main gameplay modes. The "Career" mode allows the player to unlock tracks, cars and upgrades. In "Free Play", the player can play with previously unlocked tracks and vehicles. The "Multiplayer" mode gives the player the ability to play against others online. The game includes 52 licensed cars, 20 career classes and 15 race tracks from the Android version of Asphalt 6: Adrenaline.[citation needed] Although the previous game Asphalt 3D has 17 tracks from the Android version of Asphalt 5.
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A really bare-bones experience.
None of the Asphalt games were really ever played for the handling or the controls. It was always assumed that these were mobile games, so that didn't matter much. And, living up to its reputation, this game feels and controls like a mobile game. You practically never have to use the handbrake, except for when you're "drifting", if you can call it that. The drifting in this game feels like you're committing some kinda crime against nature, because the game is actively resisting you. And yet there are drift races, where, like in NFS, you have to gain points by drifting. Except, unlike in NFS, you do it on regular tracks.
Speaking of tracks, there seems to be a high number of them, but you need to unlock new ones by playing different modes of the old ones. It gets repetitive pretty quickly. Not to mention, the graphics in this game look so sterile. They appear pretty at first, but quickly you just get bored of them. Couple that with generic music and art-design, and the whole presentation becomes vomit-inducing if you play the game for any longer than 2 hours.
The worst offender, in my opinion, is the lack of variety and customization. This has always been the only reason anybody I knew ever played Asphalt. The fact that you could pick a Hummer, for example, and tune it like in a NFS game, with spoilers, bumpers, neon and vinyls. This game does not have that. It has several colors of paint and a number of boring decals, which all have a preset color that you cannot change. That is literally it. I mean, sure, you can upgrade speed, handling and other internal stuff, but you can't really make the car your own. Which kinda negates the whole point of customization in the first place.
As a result it comes down to this: what is the point of playing this game? This isn't good as an NFS clone, isn't particularly good as a Burnout clone, isn't at all a simulator and doesn't offer anything unique either. It's just this sort of mediocre racing game with no personality of its own. It gets even worse when you consider that it doesn't just have other PS Vita racing games to compete against, but the entire PS1 and PSP libraries, because they're available on Vita. Games like Burnout Legends, NFS Most Wanted: 5-1-0, Midnight Club 3 and even this game's own predecessor Asphalt Urban GT2 are all way better options, if you're looking for an arcade racer of this style. The only thing this game does better is graphics, and even that is only in the technical sense.
None of the Asphalt games were really ever played for the handling or the controls. It was always assumed that these were mobile games, so that didn't matter much. And, living up to its reputation, this game feels and controls like a mobile game. You practically never have to use the handbrake, except for when you're "drifting", if you can call it that. The drifting in this game feels like you're committing some kinda crime against nature, because the game is actively resisting you. And yet there are drift races, where, like in NFS, you have to gain points by drifting. Except, unlike in NFS, you do it on regular tracks.
Speaking of tracks, there seems to be a high number of them, but you need to unlock new ones by playing different modes of the old ones. It gets repetitive pretty quickly. Not to mention, the graphics in this game look so sterile. They appear pretty at first, but quickly you just get bored of them. Couple that with generic music and art-design, and the whole presentation becomes vomit-inducing if you play the game for any longer than 2 hours.
The worst offender, in my opinion, is the lack of variety and customization. This has always been the only reason anybody I knew ever played Asphalt. The fact that you could pick a Hummer, for example, and tune it like in a NFS game, with spoilers, bumpers, neon and vinyls. This game does not have that. It has several colors of paint and a number of boring decals, which all have a preset color that you cannot change. That is literally it. I mean, sure, you can upgrade speed, handling and other internal stuff, but you can't really make the car your own. Which kinda negates the whole point of customization in the first place.
As a result it comes down to this: what is the point of playing this game? This isn't good as an NFS clone, isn't particularly good as a Burnout clone, isn't at all a simulator and doesn't offer anything unique either. It's just this sort of mediocre racing game with no personality of its own. It gets even worse when you consider that it doesn't just have other PS Vita racing games to compete against, but the entire PS1 and PSP libraries, because they're available on Vita. Games like Burnout Legends, NFS Most Wanted: 5-1-0, Midnight Club 3 and even this game's own predecessor Asphalt Urban GT2 are all way better options, if you're looking for an arcade racer of this style. The only thing this game does better is graphics, and even that is only in the technical sense.
Dire
Gameloft and I don’t really get along. They used to release good Java mobile games back in the day, but after smartphones took off they released nothing but free to play or pay to win garbage. Sadly, this leaked over into handhelds a few times and the Vita was no exception. Injection is a dumbed down port of Asphalt 6: Adrenaline for mobile phones. A mobile game being directly ported to a handheld isn’t the best of ideas and this game proves why.
With all of the pay to win aspects taken out of Asphalt, this is a rare opportunity to see how the game would play if all microtransactions and other cancer-riddled stuff is stripped out. On the surface, it’s a reasonably accessible and playable racing game with licensed cars, more like a low budget PS2 title. The tracks are boring but work, with boost icons and jumps. The purpose of the game it to boost your way through the track as much as you can and take shortcuts. Once you fill your boost meter you can go into Adrenaline mode which allows you to easily knock cars off the road Burnout style and zoom ahead. I found the cars all pretty much handle the same, drifting is awful, and the whole game feels stiff and poorly made.
That’s not to say there’s zero fun in the game, it does work and is a nice mindless racer for fans of the series or anyone wanting a bargain bin racer on the Vita. Gameloft is not geniuses when it comes to handhelds as they don’t work like mobile phones. Outside of career mode, you can race with other people (no one was even playing during launch don’t worry) and there are typical event types to participate in such as elimination, time trial, and various others that have been done to death.
Injection is ugly, stiff, boring, and a slightly upgraded port of a mobile game that was already over a year old before the Vita was released. If you exhausted all your other racing option on Vita then go for this dead last.
With all of the pay to win aspects taken out of Asphalt, this is a rare opportunity to see how the game would play if all microtransactions and other cancer-riddled stuff is stripped out. On the surface, it’s a reasonably accessible and playable racing game with licensed cars, more like a low budget PS2 title. The tracks are boring but work, with boost icons and jumps. The purpose of the game it to boost your way through the track as much as you can and take shortcuts. Once you fill your boost meter you can go into Adrenaline mode which allows you to easily knock cars off the road Burnout style and zoom ahead. I found the cars all pretty much handle the same, drifting is awful, and the whole game feels stiff and poorly made.
That’s not to say there’s zero fun in the game, it does work and is a nice mindless racer for fans of the series or anyone wanting a bargain bin racer on the Vita. Gameloft is not geniuses when it comes to handhelds as they don’t work like mobile phones. Outside of career mode, you can race with other people (no one was even playing during launch don’t worry) and there are typical event types to participate in such as elimination, time trial, and various others that have been done to death.
Injection is ugly, stiff, boring, and a slightly upgraded port of a mobile game that was already over a year old before the Vita was released. If you exhausted all your other racing option on Vita then go for this dead last.