Ridge Racer Unbounded Preview

Ridge Racer Unbounded: multiplayer aims to get the series back on track.

Where other racing games have lately looked to reinvent the multiplayer wheel with a variety of new modes, Ridge Racer: Unbounded is keeping it simple - this is a classic set of racing modes with a boost mechanic and a pleasant aesthetic sheen of jazzy colours.

On your bread-and-butter Domination mode, you do a few laps of the course against other players in a bid for 1st place. Unbounded's Power gauge - charged via drifting - gives you the ability to smash through select bits of scenery to create shortcuts, as well as frag other players if you collide when powered up.

Corners are taken with tandem application of drift and brake, and the delicate handling and aggressive engines ensure counter-steer is a necessity more often than it is not. Beginner players will often find themselves taking corners with either excessive under or oversteer, too, and the fussy steering will only start to make sense after a few hours behind the wheel.

Though, at the same time, I'm not convinced that the handling model feels right - both the jack-of-all-trades Wolfram GS and the fast-but-wobbly Hurricana CX seemed to lack a necessary weight. This might get better with personal expertise, but at the same time it lacks the certain immediacy that I think an arcade-style racing game needs; I'm talking about the kind of pick-up-and-play punch that its namesake franchise has been trading off for over a decade now.

Three Domination tracks were shown off as part of the event - The Unbounded, Proving Grounds, and Crash and Burn - and each showed a focus on function over form. Courses shrink and expand, forcing players into confrontation as tracks narrow. You'll need a few warm-up runs on each track, though, to get a feel for when to use your Power and when to save it for clearing an obstacle and opening a shortcut.

The multiplayer modes will also support Ridge Racer: Unbounded's City Creator tools, which Namco detailed before Christmas.

Bugbear has clearly taken inspiration from the work of British studios like Criterion and the now-defunct Black Rock with its spin on Ridge Racer, and there's certainly space in the crowded racing market for a high-octane arcade racer in the vein of Burnout and Split/Second. But the studio also needs to ensure it spends its final development days balancing and refining the game before its release if they want Ridge Racer Unbounded to be must-have rather than a me-too.

Ridge Racer: Unbounded will be released for Xbox 360, PS3 and PC on March 2.