Ridge Racer Unbounded

Ridge Racer Unbounded (RRU) may carry the Ridge Racer moniker but it’s a far cry from any Ridge Racer game you’ve played in the past. Drifting still plays a crucial part in the latest from Bugbear Entertainment but by adding in a whole lot of destructibility to environments, RRU allows players to blaze through its levels with reckless abandon making the game feel more like Split/Second rather than what players have to come to expect from Namco’s racing series. And that’s really not a bad thing.

Drifting is the name of the game

RRU is structured like most arcade racing games where you partake in a bunch of offline single player modes to comprehend the gameplay mechanics after which you take your skills online. The single player campaign offers a significant amount of races spread throughout a fictional city called Shutter Bay city so unless you absolutely suck at racing games, you should be pretty proficient with the game’s drifting mechanics in a few hours.

Drifting in RRU is a bit different than most games and takes some getting used to. As you approach a turn, nailing that perfect drift is a combination of pressing the Drift button while easing up on the gas and steering in another direction. Like I said, it takes some getting used to but after a few races you should be just fine. Drifting real well or drafting behind opponents, nets you boost that can be used to either take down other cars or blast through buildings and other structures effectively creating your own shortcut in the process.

I'm on fire - literally

Boost in this game isn’t unlimited so you have to decide whether you want that short burst of speed in the conventional way by taking the lead or use it in a more destructive fashion to blast through buildings or take your opponents down. This adds a nice layer of strategy to the game making sure every race offers up a new challenge. Throughout the campaign, you’ll indulge in various game modes that range from simply competing in races to our personal favourite, Domination events that require speed, tact and a whole lot of aggression on your part to win. In between you’ll come across other more conventional modes like time attack, or drift attack that are fairly self-explanatory. You also have something called Frag Attack that basically has you taking down cars before the timer runs out. This mode should have in fact been the cherry upon this destructive cake but it turns out to be rather cumbersome since you cannot turn off the Burnout style cinematic camera that kicks in after every single takedown.