I’m pretty impressed with some of the tactics at play here there’s some sneaky tricks thrown in right along with shameless cash grabs. But this is a game on the Nintendo Switch, a proper console,I just spent $20 on DLC (Full disclosure, DLC code was provided by Gameloft, but you get the point) and I can’t even drive whatever car I want when I want to drive it? This is just one example where you’ll be lured to spend more money. I wouldn’t buy it, but I would be ok with it. This would be fine on a purely free-to-play game on my mobile, I’d be ok with it. When that happens you’ll either need to wait for a timer to run out before your gas refills, jump into another car that you might not have spent time and in-game credits on, or of course you can just spend real money and get a refill. And then my car ran out of fuel after six races.

Drifting around long sweeping bends, hitting ramps and performing barrel rolls is as gleeful as you might expect and I was having a great time showing blatant disregard for any road and traffic law. To me it feels like a Burnout game with its fast-paced arcade style physics complete with a nitro boost feature and bashing other racers off the road to earn refills you even get that cool slowdown effect when you manage to eliminate a rival. The racing aspect of Asphalt 9: Legends as alluded to above, is rather enjoyable. What it does not do, is curb any enthusiasm from the game to ask for more money, and that’s what turns this into somewhat of a head on collision. Sure, Asphalt 9 is presented as a free-to-play, and I’d probably feel at least a little more forgiving if that was the end of the story developers have to make money somewhere, right? The plot thickens however when considering that a “Starting Racer Pack” DLC is offered at the price of $19.99, which offers a bunch of goodies to get you started, basically some half decent cars to get you going, along with quantities of in-game currency (of which there are two). And that’s a shame, because when Asphalt 9 is being a racing game, it’s actually pretty good but those moments are frequently broken up by flashing ads and pop-ups luring players to swipe their credit cards.

But then it’s been years since I played a mobile game, so I didn’t realise Gameloft would be in such a race for my wallet. Maybe I should have known what to expect from Asphalt 9: Legends, with its long history in mobile gaming mobile devices are where the series got its start if we consider the Nokia N-Gage release of Asphalt Urban GT in 2004 alongside the Nintendo DS release.

Asphalt 9: Legends cars