Game Review | Asphalt 8: Airborne

Asphalt 8: Airborne is the first game that I got a chance to test out with the game DVR in the Xbox app included with Windows 10. It was not my first experience with an Asphalt game but it certainly was my most enjoyable. Keep reading and find out why.

Like all the previous Asphalt games, Asphalt 8: Airborne was developed and published by Gameloft. Gameloft are best known for making great mobile games, but as I’m not a fan of mobile gaming I’ve never really played any of their games for much more than a few minutes. With that being said I already knew that they had a pretty good pedigree, so when I was looking for games to test out with the Windows 10 Xbox app’s in-game DVR I immediately got Asphalt 8: Airborne, which was easy to acquire from the windows app store for free.

Airborne is a “free to play” game. For those less educated on video game terms, that means that it’s free to download and play some of the in-game content, but some of it is locked behind a pay wall. Games like these usually slip by the conventional “Gamer”, because most of us are accustomed to paying the addition fee on day one, and then playing to our hearts content. This game basically gives you that, except that it costs nothing on day one unless you want to progress further faster. If you’re like me, then you’ll probably spend an average of 30 mins per day with it until you unlock all the good stuff, however there are also those that will just buy all the best cars from day one and skip their way thought the seasons in career mode, and this is what I like most about Asphalt 8. It the kind of game that caters to both the modern, pay to win gamers and us play to win types at the same time in one very seamless package.

Modes

The game features all the modes you’d expect from a racing game. You have your Career mode labeled “Play” on the main menu. This is where you will be spending most of your time with this title if you’re hoping to unlock the content without paying. The career is split up into sections called seasons. There are 9 seasons in all and each has an assortment of races that are split between different classes of cars. When you start up the game for the first time you will only have access to the first season, but you can unlock the others by collecting stars or by paying to unlock them.

Asphalt 8 win10 Airborne menu

 

Next you have your standard online multiplayer mode. This mode allows you to enter a lobby and racer against other racers from around the world. There’s not much more to it than that.

Events is the second most interesting mode that I found myself messing around with quite a bit while messing about with this title. The mode offers you a selection of races for a limited period of time. The races all have very specific requirements and are as far as I know online multiplayer type races. Other than having the races available for a limited period of time there is one other similarity that all the event races share, and that is the entry requirements that all the event races share. Each race requires the player to make a payment of currency called fuel. Each day you are given 10 fuel so that regenerates over time. So if you use up all your fuel on a few races then you’re unable to enter another event until it refills to the amount need to enter that event.

The game also has a local multiplayer mode that I was unable to get to work. It was suppose to work over LAN, but we were unable to get it to run between a laptop and my desktop that both had the game installed. I’m sure it works, but with the limited amount of time that I have available to me per week for gaming I didn’t bother to seek out a fix to get it to work.

The last and probably least used mode in this game is Quick Solo Race. It’s exactly what it sounds like. Though I’m not sure who would actually use this mode, as It’s such a forgettable mode. I even think the developers thought so too and that is why decided it didn’t need to be on the main menu, and hid behind another menu.

The Gameplay is this one reminds me of Hydro thunder and Ridge Racer

 

Airborne is a game that I didn’t expect to like as much as I did, and part of that was because of nostalgia. Those of us that grew up in the era of arcades and games like Hydro thunder will feel easily at home with this one. This game is so fun that after introducing it to one family member, I found my entire household one night huddled around a laptop taking turns trying to beat each other’s high-scores. It’s pretty easy to get the hang of, and simple enough that the even that bloke that always says he’s not a gamer, but is always sending you candy crush request on Facebook will like it.

Asphalt 8 win10 Airborne Tesla

The game has 5 classes of cars (D,C, B, A, & S) which are all available from the first moment you boot it up “if you can afford it”, and there are many entry level vehicles for each that will only cost you a few thousand coins. Coin, the main in game currency, is also very easy to come by. Sometimes I was able to get roughly 1000 coins per race, so if you’re dedicated you can have at least one car in each class and then tune them to your specific requirement in a relatively short amount of time.

Asphalt 8 is also a pretty good looking game on PC. Each of the locations featured in the game, from a fictional Tokyo to Dubai, looked and ran great on my Windows 10 rig.

My Basic Specs:

CPU: AMD FX 8370e

GPU: R9 270

RAM: 8GB

How is it with Windows 10? 

As this game is in the Xbox store it also features achievements that include gamerscore. So for those of you that have an XBL Account we can easily add to that ever growing score if one so desire. I have already gotten 13/20 achievements in my 5 hrs with the game, which means some of you may acquire all in just one day.

The game also has Xbox One and 360 controller support so if you prefer to race with a game pad then you have that option, if not you can also use the keyboard, and maybe some generic controllers.

Asphalt 8 win10 Airborne gameplay

All in all Asphalt 8: Airborne is a great game that runs great with the in game DVR. I highly recommend you get it if you’re running windows 10 and haven’t gotten it already.


if you’d like to hear more of my thoughts on this topic, then I suggest you listen to the Buttonsmashers podcast.

Qudduws Campbell

That messy hair bloke: Romantic, Food lover, Gamer, Sports Fan, Manga Reader, Tech Head, Podcaster... Pretty much do a bit of everything.