Asphalt 3: Street Rules HD

Asphalt 3: Street Rules HD is a simple case of a game desperately wanting to be something that, in reality, it just isn't. Not quite yet, anyway. Under the bonnet, it's a black Golf GTI with all the mod-cons - sexy, sporty and highly desirable. The problem is, to the naked eye it's actually just a Seat Ibiza; plain, a little bit chavvy and a tiny bit cheap.

If someone were to hand you a list of the game's specifications and nothing else, then you'd be mightily impressed. Pitching itself as a street racer, this high-definition remake of Asphalt 3 comes with everything you might expect - six cities across the globe play host to the races, while the likes of Ford, Mini, Nissan, Aston Martin, Chevrolet, Lamborghini, Ruf and Pagani all contribute cars to the line-up.

Street Rules HD also ships with a standard career mode, which consists of the basic approach - race wins equal money, which unlocks further tracks, cars, and � bizarrely � women, which I'll come back to later. Each car can also be tuned, right down to the smallest degree, but while this is a game that has ambitions to compete with the latest and greatest arcade racers, it seems to have forgotten that its chosen home severely limits what it can achieve.

Case in point - the idea to squeeze just that little bit more out of the game's visuals by notching it up to HD. Doing so only seems to highlight its downfalls - those being its slightly blocky and glitchy nature. A little bit of the Ibiza showing through the paintwork, if you will.

That said, Street Rules HD does have a lot to recommend � largely its street racing approach to the genre. The courses themselves, in Honolulu, San Francisco, Las Vegas, Rome, St. Petersburg and Tokyo, are nicely varied, full of corners and civilian traffic acting as obstacles, all able to provide a genuine thrill - when you can follow just where you are on the track, that is.

Describing the races themselves as hectic is putting it lightly - with eight cars on the track, nitro boosts in the pocket and police chases aplenty, there's ample action to be had here.

Flying around the courses is no easy task, and moving up the rankings relies on you 'taking out' your competitors by slamming them into walls until they crash. Doing so adds boost to your bar - as does driving through boost icons on the track - helping you to keep up with and eventually pass your rivals.

It results in the kind of frenzied racing the Asphalt franchise has always promised, but at the cost of a smooth ride. This is no doubt something that will become less of an issue in the series' inevitable further sequels, with the power of phones continuing to ramp up, but for now this sacrifice does taint what is otherwise a genuinely thrilling racing experience.

Such thrills make you wonder why Gameloft has felt the need to dress the package up. In places, Asphalt 3 really does feel like a poor man's '2 Fast 2 Furious', with the developers shoehorning in the option of "buying" girls with your winnings.

Said girls do come with their own individual in-race bonuses, but the way they're presented does make you feel like you're playing a game pitched at a couple of prepubescent Max Power readers, which may leave a sour taste in certain mouths.

Combined with Street Rules HD's slight in-game glitches, this certainly isn't the finished article, but its endeavour is one to admire and it certainly tries hard enough to warrant a download for a quick fix of flawed-but- fun urban racing. It's a bit like renting a Seat Ibiza until you can afford that flashy Golf, if you like - there are better times to come, but right now Asphalt 3: Street Rules HD does the job.