The game of transactions – Asphalt 8: Airborne Review

A multiplayer game should set you up with a competition of skills. In this game your opponent assures his victory through in game transactions that directly equates to better cars, tuning/level ups, and VIP rewards. You can try to grind for free for days but the credits and token drops are at a rate that would take you months to achieve anything. The only way to really progress in the game is to buy tokens. You might at first think hey that’s a fair way to get a person to check out the game and then invest in it so the developer can continue to make great games- sadly it is not so. There are some strange differences between credits and tokens that you can waste your real cash on. Let’s take the top level super car for example. You can spend about 300 real dollars to get about 5 million credits to buy it. Or you can spend 100 real dollars for the 15,000 tokens that would buy it. Kind of expensive either way. Kind of an odd difference too right? Wait, why are there two virtual currencies confounding you, the gamer? Are they trying to pull a fast one? This makes me ill. Moving on... coins are almost always generated from in game maneuvers and racing in general. Tokens can be extra prizes, log in rewards, basically bonuses for someone who is logging on and winning the most in a league or race event. This difference in credit/token costs assures that the grinding player will have a harder time than the token winning/buying player... just remember that the buying player is able to get the winningest car, so he’ll also be getting all the winnings. There is even a VIP leveling layer that increases winnings percent if you are buying things with real cash. I hate this. Of course, wether grinder or buyer, you cannot tell how much it costs to upgrade the parts on the car until you’ve gotten it- some popular cars that are given as rewards happen to be a lot more expensive to upgrade. A lot more. Wow. 21,000 coin to upgrade the VW Beetle Turbo top speed to level 2? Ouch- wait a minute, now I gotta wait for random car part card drops too? Seems like they are always S class rated cards, and all my D class cars are stuck waiting for the D class card drops that never happen. Shouldn’t D level drops happen for a player just starting??? I guess my only option is to buy tokens to buy... Boxes... that... only drop random cards... THIS HAS ALWAYS MADE ME ANGRY. IF I AM TO BUY A THING, WHY CAN’T I JUST BUY THE THING??? All said, it can be a wildly fun game if you ignore the transactions and accept that VIPs will always trounce right through you at the start of every race with purchased nitros in multiplayer SO THERE IS LITERALLY NO POINT TO COMPETING. But there is a basic moral issue that needs to be addressed. There are kids that play this game, and this game is rife with advertisements with links, and addictive sequences asking for coin for completion of collections, leveling up cars, basic components of... gambling? Is this gambling? What else can it be called if you are betting your real money that a box might contain an item of value, that then through further game manipulation returns to you more varieties of credits and tokens? Anyway, the level of monetization in every aspect of the game destroys the play value. Which is a shame because it almost compares to the Burnout Takedown and Revenge series... just without being able to control specific methods of takedowns, without damage meters/damage graphics, w/o an epic stunt filled destruction mode, w/o a split screen pvp mode, w/o an in game radio you can control with indie musicians... etc. Why am I even playing this game, I would rather spend $200 on an old xbox with a driving wheel to play the real Burnout. I just want to buy a modern racing game I can enjoy on my new large flatscreen and AppleTV. I do not want a microtransitions/collecting/ quasigambling game. There is no option to simply buy this game to rid it of the ads and microtransactions, not even to make it friendly for kids. Hang your heads in shame, Gameloft. Look how you’ve ruined video game racing. Oh wait, now there’s tap to steer in Asphalt 9!!!! My god, it revels in it’s shame.
Review by Long_Haired_Artist on Asphalt 8: Airborne.