Every effect has been dialed up, with bright glare staining a dirty lens, contrasted by long shadows cast by a low-hanging sun. Despite the move away from the colorful palette of the past games, Asphalt 8 is realized with a whole lot of style. Gone are the bright, cartoony visuals of the last few entries, replaced with more realistic sets bathed in natural sunlight, and rendered with a host of effects that seem almost exaggeratedly real. It’s a true next-gen effort in every sense.Īsphalt 8 is the first game to use Gameloft’s latest tech, and it’s simply miles ahead of anything else on mobile right now. Asphalt 8 is a return to form, built from the ground up on an entirely new engine. But Gameloft is not content to merely coast. Asphalt 7 not only recycled the gameplay of its predecessor wholesale, but most of its tracks as well, leaving something that felt like a gussied up expansion pack hardly any way to treat a flagship. And, unlike much of their lineup, it’s an original series that may occasionally crib from the likes of Need for Speed, but over the years has carved out its own identity.Īsphalt is important to Gameloft, but last year, it seemed as if they were content to rest on their laurels. Their longest running series, it was one of the first to really push high-end 3D graphics on the wimpy dumbphones of the day, and Gameloft’s only series that continues to appear on handheld gaming systems alongside phones and tablets. Asphalt has long been something of a flagship for Gameloft.