Ridge Racer: Unbounded Review: Event Dominated

Ridge Racer: Unbounded Review: Event Dominated

Ridge Racer: Unbounded
PlayStation 3, Xbox 360
Namco/Bandai Games
Racing

Ridge Racer: Unbounded is an arcade racing title that dominates in many ways. There are a number of game types for you to play as you tackle different locations in Shatter Bay. Each location has a total of 7 events for you to complete, or dominate should you choose to perfect the game. You dominate events by getting 3 out of 3 stars which usually entails you finishing first or have a certain amount of frags. (Frags equal the number of cars you blow up by crashing into them).

Ridge Racer: Unbounded has a good amount of depth for you to enjoy, but what makes it even greater is something called city creator mode. This allows you to put blocks of road networks together to create your very own course just the way you like it. You can also put a number of different objects on the course to cause explosions or simply make huge jumps. Whatever type of course you want to create, there are a lot of ways to do it. This is a mode that I am sure many of you will spend countless hours creating and testing your own course. And then even more hours perfecting it to your liking. Once you complete it you can upload it to share with others.

For those of you who aren’t the biggest fans of creating your own courses, you will still benefit by simply getting to experience them all. I had a lot of fun with the regular game, but when it came to experiencing some of the courses that others have created, I simply couldn’t stop laughing at how crazy or awesomely fun they were. I should also mention that if you want a quick way to level up your profile, there are a number of courses online that allow you to get massive points so that you can unlock your vehicles and city blocks for the city creator really quickly.

The gameplay handles really well and I ended up liking it a lot. At first I had to get use to the feel of the game, but it didn’t take too long. I found the drifting handled really well, but of course it depends on the type of car you are driving as some are extremely slippery. All of the cars are fun and have their own unique stats when it comes to speed, acceleration, strength, drift and so on. Some cars will certainly be better than others when it comes to certain game types. For pure racing you will want pure speed, or if there is going to be a lot of fragging you will certainly want a car with good strength and one that can handle better. I liked each one of the cars and thought there was good variety.

Each track that you race on has a good variety of obstacles to race through. When you do regular races you have a boost meter, but when you do the other game types you have a power boost meter that allows you to crash through walls, some of which have a bit of a shortcut to them. You can also destroy gas trucks and other objects that will actually frag any near-by cars which will demand more of your attention during these races. I like the tracks and the city blocks that you use to create the tracks. There are a lot of good pieces to each area that makes the racing most enjoyable.

Visually the game looks really solid, the explosions are nice and the detail of the walls breaking or anything that you run into is good as well. There is nothing to be overly excited about with the graphics, but it’s certainly not bad by any means. The soundtrack is fairly decent depending on whether or not you like techno style music. It did seem to get a bit repetitive after awhile though.

Overall, I loved Ridge Racer: Unbounded. It can be very exciting and a ton of fun. I love blasting through buildings and taking crazy jumps, I also like fragging my opponents. There is a great deal of fun for anyone who likes a good arcade racer. But the thing that makes this great is the ability to create your own tracks, upload them online, and then of course to be able to play tracks that others have created. Eventually using track creator we will run out of new designs but in the meantime it should provide hours of great fun. Plus, there are plenty of cars and building blocks to unlock as you level up. I easily recommend this title to anyone looking for a good arcade racer.

Score: 9/10