Asphalt 8: Airborne (pre-2016)

Asphalt 8: Airborne (pre-2016)
A spectacular game that was airborne... before Vivendi walked in and screwed it.
Genre(s): Racing Platform(s): Android iOS Microsoft Windows Blackberry 10 Tizen tvOS Release: August 22, 2013 Developer(s): mh:crappygames:Gameloft Publisher(s): Gameloft Series: Asphalt Predecessor: Asphalt 7: Heat Successor: Asphalt Xtreme

Asphalt 8 Airborne is a 2013 racing video game, developed and published by Gameloft as part of the Asphalt series. It was released on August 22, 2013 for iOS and Android, November 13 for Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8, January 15, 2014 for BlackBerry 10. and April 5, 2015 for Tizen.

Why It Was Once Airborne

1. Lots of licensed cars to choose from, many are exotic models that are not seen on any other game (like the W Motors Fenyr SuperSport, the Falcon F7 and the Mercedes-Benz Biome Concept). They even brought back the motorcycles since Urban GT 2, Elite Racing and Adrenaline in the August 2017 update. Including Hot-Wheels cars in the latest updates.
2. Creative race tracks with lots of variety. You can race on the neon lit streets of Tokyo, on the beaches of Rio de Janeiro, even on the flight deck of an aircraft carrier!
3. The controls are simple and easy to pick up, you can pull of some truly impressive drifts or stunts at the press of a button. But it still require some skill to become truly good at the game.
5. Great soundtrack.
   • There are several songs on the soundtrack that are actually good.
   • Also, some more songs were added in the Great Wall Update.
6. Lots of updates which introduces several new exotic cars/bikes.
7. Tons of replay value.
8. Because of it's replay value it gets lots of support and updates.
9. Lots of driving challenges which puts your skills to the test.
10. Impressive top-notch graphics - which is impressive for a mobile game released in 2013 (easily one of the best on the mobile platform).
11. Play on a high-end platform and you can enjoy some truly awesome special effects.
12. Although it has micro transactions, the feature becomes pretty fair for players as they are given a choice for low amount of Tokens, or high amount of Tokens. Tokens are a new currency to buy cars, which makes it super fair to buy cars instead of cash.
13. No annoying cops to harass you in the middle of a race, a mechanic that was ditched since the fifth game in favour of stunts.
14. You can even play it on your computer (if you have Windows 10 or later) and the framerate is quite good.
15. Good for those who enjoy the Burnout series.
16. The physics engine of the game can produce some very hilarious gameplay moments.
17. The BMW M2 (F87) "Special Edition"'s Fall Out Boy World Tour event, a few Fall Out Boy songs were added to the game only for that event.
18. It was the first mobile racing game with over 200 vehicles, and the list of vehicles in the game is still large.
19. Asphalt Moments series are now held to allow players to play events they could not play or complete in the past.
    • Of course, there are some events that are relaunched independently of Asphalt Moments (e.g. Lamborghini Aventador LP 750-4 SV EDD) as well, and fortunately, unlike Asphalt Moments, these events do not require the VIP System to participate.
      • However, some events that were relaunched independently were changed to become more of a money vacuum (eg. Apollo Intensa Emozione R&D lost it’s free upgrades, Lamborghini Centenario LP 770-4 R&D now forces a MAX PRO rank to win unless you spend Tokens to skip the races).
20. As of the end of 2017, it is now possible to view Pro Box drop rates so you know what you are likely to get based on the rarity percentages shown.
21. Some of the non-generic decal designs in this game are actually well-made and worthy of being replicated in other games.
22. The Career Mode seasons actually invoke the titles of past Asphalt games, which can satisfy longtime veterans of the series.
23. Despite its problems, the game actually still had some value of fun before Vivendi's hostile takeover of Gameloft in 2016.
24. Despite the removal of the ability to farm Credits through Car Mastery, farming Credits was still possible through Season 9 or McLaren Legends Season until the earnings were nerfed, even with the earlier-released cars for the former season.
    • However, the March 2020 update heavily nerfed the earnings for Season 9, while the May 2020 Update, nerfed the McLaren Legends season's payout.
25. In the December 2018 Holiday Update, Gameloft actually made it possible to obtain the five achievements related to obtaining cars from each class by changing them to own 15 from each class instead of owning the "original" cars, including the two RUFs (Rt 12 S in Class C, CTR 3 in Class B) and the Scion FR-S.
26. The game was re-released to Apple Arcade on August 27, 2021 under the name: Asphalt 8: Airborne+ which gets rid of all the microtransactions (as well as ads) and is a much more fun experience, being very similar to the pre-Vivendi days.

Bad Qualties

1. The game's riddled with microtransactions now.
   • Since Vivendi's hostile acquision of Gameloft in 2016, the game has started getting worse by becoming more pay-to-win, and later pay to play. This was exacerbated further in the Fast Lane Update (aka the FLU), and has only gotten worse through updates released after the takeover.
2. Most of the tracks added in later updates (such as Rio de Janeiro and Patagonia) were only available in multiplayer, time limited events and special events. In fact, the Area 51 track was not made available in practice mode for 24 updates.
3. Newer cars can be very difficult to obtain due to their high purchase and upgrade prices, made worse by the fact that you earn only a small amount of money per race depending in which car you're using from a certain tier. (For example: Grinding money with a Tier D car will give you the lowest amount of money compared when grinding with a Tier S car such as the Lamborghini Centenario)
   • The cars that are obtainable from Festivals are hard to upgrade: all of them need their respective Kit Cards (and sometimes normal Kit Cards). But to get them, you need to trade a lot of your credits with Wild cards to get them. Plus, the vehicles which use both normal and their own cards are much costlier.
     • If a new Festival vehicle has been added in a update, you can get its cards only an update later.
4. Visual customization are also overpriced, some decals can even cost more than the car it's applied to!
5. Cars tends to be very unbalanced. Some are made obsolete very quickly; while some are so overpowered that they are nearly unrivalled. This makes MP and TLEs very car dependent.
6. AI racers can be very incompetent in terms of racing, in fact, sometimes their performance are bad it's doubtful whether they even know how to drive.
7. Updates usually bring a lot of bugs and glitches. One notable example is in the 19th update where a bug will cause one layout of the Great Wall track to load in place of another, making some of the racing challenges impossible to complete.
8. Some of the engine sounds do not match, for example, hybrid cars like the Peugeot SR-1 and the Sbarro Sparta got paired with an electric car's sound, and the Nissan Skyline GT-R (R34) and Nissan GT-R Nismo having the BMW M3 GTR E46’s V8 engine sound. It doesn't really all that much though since Asphalt 8 is targeting unrealism, not exactly realistic.
9. The Munich Update converted about 25 cars into Token only Upgrades (some like the Mercedes-Benz SLK 55 AMG Special Edition, Porsche 959, Chevrolet Corvette C7 Grand Sport Convertible and the Aston Martin Vulcan which are the best cars used in Multiplayer and Time limited events) which caused a massive negative Backlash towards this. Fortunately Gameloft reverted this change on Halloween day 2017.
10. An update in mid-November 2017 changed nearly half of the prices of the featured cars from credits to Tokens (the premium currency). This change only affects newly registered players.
    • In early 2018, two updates changed the prices, also for existing players.
      • This was exacerbated further in the FLU when the Ferrari LaFerrari's price was changed from 235,000 Credits to 2,400 tokens, just 575 tokens less than it's price for newer players in the Munich Update.
        • After the 2019 Holiday Update, a majority of the dual-currency cars were converted to be token-only purchases, and worse, some got their prices increased, making this game a pay-to-play game.
        • The 15th anniversary update, made it even worse by reinflating the prices of many cars.
11. One of the cars, the 2015 GTA Spano, requires paying $4,000 ($5,600CAD) in microtransactions just to unlock it, and is not worth it, since it has a worse performance compared to the 1770-ranked cars or the 2017 Ford GT.
12. The Fast Lane Update (AKA The FLU) made the game even worse by making mastery races no longer replayable (especially for grinding), not award any free upgrades in new R&D etc.
13. The 2019 Spring Update nerfed the credit payouts, like one season 8 race that paid like 4,500 was reduced to just 1,200 credits.
    • Also, in March 2020, Season 9’s credit rewards were reduced to just roughly 10-15% of the existing credit rewards.
14. The upgrade system was heavily revamped with the addition of the Fusion Coins currency, which made Pro Kits only appliable with the aforementioned new currency and the Fusion Coin exchanges were heavily lowered, as well as heavily inflating the costs of applying Pro Kits, which caused massive negative feedback from the players.
15. Unlike the previous games, the cars' interiors are not visible. To make matters worse, there is no driver in the car during races, which makes the cars look like they're being controlled by ghosts.
16. The recent new Eighth Anniversary Update was very disappointing:
    • The garage was revamped to look like a bunker, possibly to turn into a dark tone of the game, but just fails.
    • The menu layout was revamped to have all of its events on one section, including Festivals.
      • The TLE section has been buggy for a while: the finished events ready to claim are still available on the section, making lots of confusion.
        • The anniversary TLEs had a buggy leaderboard system: if you wanted the aforementioned Centenario, you would be in top 25%, and if you were in top 25%, you wouldn't actually get the car.
    • It has added an avatar feature, which just contains the generic ones and has nothing to do with gameplay.
    • It has been introduced an Festival format which contains 30 tiers instead of usual 25, cars are locked behind paywalls, and coin boxes contain only 8 coins.
    • The keyboard controls were even buggier on Festival sections than before.
    • It has removed the Ads section, Daily Tasks and Mastery section.

Reception

The game has received critical acclaim from critics.

Touch arcade gave this game 5 stars.

Pocket Gamer also gave this a 9 out of 10 as well.

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