Like Woody Allen’s Zelig and Tom Hanks’ Forrest Gump, it always seems to be there, milling facelessly in the crowd of new titles that marks the launch of every major gaming handheld. Or maybe idling its engines is a more appropriate metaphor, given that we’re talking about a racing game: Asphalt: Injection, the series debut on the PlayStation Vita.

As anyone who’s played a previous entry in the Asphalt series—like, say, maybe the most recent 99-cent iPhone version–this is arcade racing at its simplest, for better and for boring. Asphalt: Injection touts its Vita-based tilt controls, but they’re not as effective as rocking the dual sticks. Frankly, the more interesting twist is the ability to use the Vita’s backpanel touch screen to shift gears. Neither Vita feature is even remotely necessary to win races and unlock new cars and events, but Gameloft deserves style points for experimentation. If you’re into it, the Vita’s front-facing camera can also snap a pic of your gloating maw after you’ve sent an online opponent into the side of a mountain.

Those races could be in Los Angeles, Moscow, Switzerland, or any of the exotically rendered locales Injection includes in its event docket. Ostensibly, races are supposed to be about jockeying for position, drifting curves and avoiding spinouts and crashes. In Asphalt: Injection, they basically boil down to collecting nitro power-ups littered obtrusively on the courses—seriously, there are gigantic beacons pointing them out–and mashing the adrenaline button early and often. This is a game that actually has to build in incentives (cash rewards, drift-based events) to force you to drift through the curves. It’s possible to win almost every race without drifting even once, but since it’s also impossible to wipe out by overdrifting, there are reasons to both avoid and mash the left trigger.

Driving through the familiar events—choices run the gamut from elimination and time trials to item-collection and avoiding capture by cops–it’s hard not to wish Asphalt: Injection had swiped a few more elements from other, better racers. Like the unbridled and delicious destruction of Burnout (the series Asphalt most idolizes and apes) or the colorful weapons of Blur. There’s a dealership’s worth of cool licensed cars (Fiats and Fords and Nissans, oh, my) to unlock here once you’ve earned the appropriate amount of cash, but none of them seem to feel or drive any differently. At least they look awesome.

Asphalt: Injection also features the latest entry in the Pantheon of Annoying Announcers—this time, a female who tries (and fails) to inject the sexy into the proceedings. “Are you feeling this? ‘Cause I’m feeling this,” she purrs when you’re trying to hold off a challenger on a straightaway. Great. Thanks for sharing. Now zip it and let me focus on actually winning the race.

Also annoying is the game’s “speeding ticket” function, in which you get docked cash for doing something (speeding, driving in the oncoming lane, etc.) because you happen to be doing it as a cop car drifts by. It’s not generally enough to drastically impede your progress toward unlocking the next cool ride, so it’s a little puzzling as to why it’s even here in the first place.

Asphalt: Injection is a perfectly competent racing game. Unfortunately, in a Vita launch crowd that includes four other racing options—at least three of which are clearly superior choices–that isn’t nearly enough to separate it from the pack.

Pros:
+ Nice array of beautifully rendered tracks
+ Wide range of licensed unlockable cars means you look cool driving
+ Backscreen touchpad shifting is a cool concept

Cons:
– Even with tracks set in icy caves and volcanoes, events feel bland and lifeless
– Female announcer’s attempt to amp the proceedings are a big flat tire
– Upgraded cars don’t feel or drive differently

Game Info:
Platform: PlayStation Vita
Publisher: Ubisoft
Developer: Gameloft
Release Date: 2/14/2012
Genre: Racing
ESRB Rating: E10+
Players: 1-8 (ad-hoc and online)
Source: Review code provided by publisher

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Gameloft has become infamous for blatantly ripping off popular franchises for its generic downloadable mobile game offerings, and at this point the company almost seems prideful in doing so. Just look through the developer’s website and you’ll find unashamed knock-offs of Grand Theft Auto, Uncharted and Modern Warfare, to name a few. However, by most accounts these games have been fun despite their beyond-the-point-of-flattery mimicry, so the lack of originality and inspiration generally gets forgiven. But sorry, Gameloft, that isn’t happening this time.

N.O.V.A. (Near Orbit Vanguard Alliance), first developed as an iPhone game in 2009, has been ported to the PlayStation Minis platform for PS3 and PSP, and from the moment the game begins the developer’s attempts to copy Halo are readily apparent. In similar fashion, N.O.V.A. is a generic sci-fi FPS in which you take up arms as a super-soldier and fight to rescue humanity from the brink of annihilation, an eerily familiar female AI helping you out along the way.

I have to say, for a low-budget $4.99 production, N.O.V.A. deserves high marks for the scope of its gameplay and the technology behind its graphics engine. The game’s 13 missions take a good three hours to complete on average (that isn’t a whole lot shorter than any of the recent Call of Duty games!), and there are built-in Trophy-style medals to go back for and an unlockable hard difficulty setting. The game is also quite impressive graphically (when running on the PSP at least), featuring detailed weapon models, varied level environments, and special effects touches that bring immersive depth to the game world, particularly in the jungle settings with flowing waterfalls and ‘God rays’ shining down through the canopy.

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Unfortunately, that’s where the compliments end, as the rest of the game just isn’t any good, no matter how hard you may try to use the cheap price point to quantify and forgive its shortcomings. N.O.V.A. runs on the familiar PSP shooter control scheme of using the face buttons to move/strafe and the analog nub to aim (or vice versa if you prefer), but even with aim assist on and the sensitivity slider adjusted, the targeting controls are so slow and imprecise that you have to work far too hard just to get an enemy lined up inside your crosshairs. The interface is also cumbersome, particularly later in the game when you’ve collected every gun and find that you can only cycle through your arsenal in one direction and there isn’t some form of radial selection menu to make the process more intuitive.

The game is technically flawed as well — it even crashed my system one time, which is an extremely rare occurrence for a PSP game in my experience. Sure, the graphics are nice, but the engine is so shaky that the rest of the game suffers. The targeting controls are already sloppy, but when the shootouts get heated and the stuttering frame rate begins to noticeably slow down your rate of fire and cause sound effects to delay or misfire completely, the gameplay goes even further down the toilet. Don’t even try to play the game on the PS3 either, because the graphics don’t scale well to the big screen at all and Gameloft didn’t bother to provide alternate controls to make use of the DualShock’s two analog sticks, so the game handles even worse than on the PSP.

No matter how you slice it, N.O.V.A. is a barebones, by-the-numbers FPS, with no sense of personality or distinguishing characteristics to individuate itself from other games in the genre. I really don’t fault the developer’s efforts, it’s just that the FPS genre simply does not lend itself to the type of scaling back that’s inherent in developing for the Minis platform, and this game is proof of that.

I had five bucks sitting unused in my PSN account for what had been at least a year, so I didn’t see any downside to using it up on this game. But as soon as I got the game downloaded and began playing, I immediately regretted my purchase and wished I had my money back. Please, don’t make the same mistake I did.

Pros:
+ Nice graphics…for a $5 game
+ Lengthy campaign mode…for a $5 game

Cons:
– Lousy controls
– Unstable frame rate directly impacts gameplay
– Audio bugs and system crashes
– Looks and plays even worse on PS3
– Downsized, oversimplified gameplay just doesn’t work for FPSs

Game Info:
Platform: PlayStation Minis (PSP and PS3)
Publisher: Gameloft
Developer: Gameloft
Release Date: 12/21/2010
Genre: FPS
ESRB Rating: Teen
Players: 1
Source: Game purchased by reviewer