In many ways, Gameloft’s Asphalt 9 Legends is a remarkable game, bringing console-quality arcade racing action to mobile phones, using many of the rendering techniques present in some of today’s most advanced game engines. It’s free – download it, try it out and see what you think. We did and we were really taken aback by just impressive this is. Eager to learn more about the current state of cutting-edge mobile game development, we contacted Gameloft to learn more – and an interesting story emerged.
Of course, looking back, there was a time when mobile graphics technology was seeing some incredible gen-on-gen leaps in performance, with John Carmack excited enough about phone graphics tech to write his own iOS games, Epic released the stunning Infinity Blade and at one point, DICE was even porting the Frostbite engine to work on mobile hardware. Reaching and surpassing Xbox 360 quality seemed like a given, but there reached a point where pushing the boundaries of mobile technology stopped becoming a priority and addressing the majority of devices out there with simpler titles became the focus. Meanwhile, lack of innovation in mobile rendering APIs and oppressive OS overheads put the dampeners on really pushing the hardware.
Asphalt 9 bucks the trend by featuring fluid performance, beautiful visuals and a rendering feature set rivalling a modern console game. For starters, it’s heavy on post-processing effects, including really impressive motion blur. Tracks stretch off into the distance with minimal pop-in while the lighting and its interaction with materials is first-class for a mobile title. The cars themselves are rich in detail, with some models featuring in excess of 90,000 polygons. There’s a full HDR rendering pipeline, high performance soft particles, a pseudo-physically based materials system and further post-process effects including crepuscular rays, screen-space reflections and colour grading.
Source: Eurogamer Asphalt 9 Legends is one of the best-looking mobile games we've seen