Beginning with your character winning a race against his mentor and bagging a spot in the France-based racing series that make up the rest of the game, you choose your initial car from a small selection (although you can unlock 40 cars in the game) and begin your winning streak. I went with an Abarth as my wife drives a Fiat 500, so I was flying the family flag – which turned out to be a good choice for the highway sections of the game which I’ll go into later.
The game is split into two main parts; the races, and your team garage which you slowly fill up with staff and engineers as you unlock more options for your ever-growing troupe of vehicles. The racing is a lot of fun, whilst there are various customisation and accessibility options, at its heart, this is a more casual arcade racer, with races being fast but sedate, with no car damage or explosive crashes, focusing more on racing sensibly than over-the-top flair. It runs at a solid 60 fps and the only thing I noticed visually of any negative whilst playing was some slight blurring on the foliage whilst turning when playing in handheld mode.
The controls are responsive and have weight to them, again you won’t be doing crazy drifts and leaving skid marks all over the place, as the game rewards you for careful driving without incident, and rubber-banding is in effect - adding to that casual and accessible sensibility.
The audio was very much a mixed bag for me, with only three radio stations to choose from – a rock/punk one and two seemingly similar electronica / trip-hop stations – I did struggle to settle on something I enjoyed after a while, and gave up on the radio completely after a couple of hours – the music that plays when you win a race also seems at odds with the presentation of the racing and narrative as it’s a blast of guitar-driven rock, which grates somewhat against the neon-lit highway races and more bucolic imagery on some of the tracks. Not to mention the text-heavy visual-novel approach of the game’s narrative structure.
Whilst the main thrust here is the campaign that allows you to progress through story mode whilst also branching off to available side races in order to build up currency to unlock extra cars as well as upgrading your main vehicle, there is a free roam mode that allows you to race on any track in the game in either single player or split-screen modes, which is a very nice addition for those that enjoy local multiplayer , and although Gear Club Unlimited 3only caters for two players, it’s still a nice inclusion.
As mentioned above, to mix things up there are also highway races on tight dual-carriageways in which you have to dart between the bustling traffic, and as I had one of the smaller cars in my trusty Abarth, these were highlights of the game, it’s genuinely thrilling to flit between trucks and vans, passing within millimetres and unlocking extra bonus points, a very satisfying part of the game.
SUMMARY
As it stands, Gear Club Unlimited 3 is a fun, if slightly bland racing game that lacks character but has great fundamentals.
Whilst the main thrust here is the campaign that allows you to progress through story mode whilst also branching off to available side races in order to build up currency to unlock extra cars as well as upgrading your main vehicle, there is a free roam mode that allows you to race on any track in the game in either single player or split-screen modes, which is a very nice addition for those that enjoy local multiplayer , and although Gear Club Unlimited 3only caters for two players, it’s still a nice inclusion.
As mentioned above, to mix things up there are also highway races on tight dual-carriageways in which you have to dart between the bustling traffic, and as I had one of the smaller cars in my trusty Abarth, these were highlights of the game, it’s genuinely thrilling to flit between trucks and vans, passing within millimetres and unlocking extra bonus points, a very satisfying part of the game.
SUMMARY
As it stands, Gear Club Unlimited 3 is a fun, if slightly bland racing game that lacks character but has great fundamentals.
Eden Games have almost twenty racing games under their belt released over the almost thirty year period of their existence and it would have been really cool for Gear Club Unlimited 3 to have a little something to make it stand out from the crowd with all of this studio experience.
Again, I applaud that it’s a pretty straight racer available for all ages of gamer, but as much as I enjoyed the racing, I was constantly hoping for a little more from the game for it to really, fully engage me.
6.5/10
MELTING💧
(also available on PS5, PC, Xbox X/S)
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