Gear.Club Unlimited 3, new horizons don't cover a monotonous driving experience – PC Review

After starting as a free-to-play mobile application, the Gear.Club franchise has come a long way. The third episode of the Unlimited series was released earlier this year as a Switch 2 exclusive and has recently arrived on PC, PS5, and Xbox. On Nintendo's hybrid console, where it could boast the merit of being one of the few racing games around, the title received a rather lukewarm reception from critics. Here, the competition is decidedly fiercer. Was it able to hold its own?

The single-player component of Gear.Club Unlimited 3 revolves around the new Story mode. Our goal will be to develop the new Japanese branch of the Gear Club, a kind of association that organizes races and official events around the world. Starting from an empty garage, we will buy our first car and convince technicians and sponsors of our worth by winning various types of races. This will allow us to purchase specialized equipment, more powerful vehicles, and climb the ranks of clubs at a national level.

The premise is intriguing, with the game seemingly wanting to embrace an competitive and managerial soul, as well as pushing the narrative, but it falls flat after a few hours. The dialogues, already extremely didactic, become increasingly rare, and interspersed with them are always the same activities, often without context. I then have a doubt about the whole affair: is this Gear Club really legal? If there's a lot of money circulating and it's full of investors, why do I find myself racing in the middle of nowhere or slalom through traffic on the highway? Where is the audience? Where does the money come from? At one point, Bugatti itself rents us a Veyron to challenge a moving train, but I still have to dodge commuters along the way; is that normal? Mystery.

Hamletic dilemmas aside, Eden Games ventures an approach somewhere between Need for Speed, as we'll have to hold onto a particular car, which we'll gradually upgrade throughout the adventure with a limited number of resources, and Gran Turismo, with events dedicated to specific manufacturers, historical periods, and power categories. The problem is that the title boasts neither the variety and character of one, nor the class and sheer volume of content of the other. We have a handful of locations that are well-made, but also flat and very similar to each other, and a car park that includes many manufacturers but with only a couple of models each, for not even 40 vehicles available. The presence of so many prestigious brands is commendable, however, at this point I would have tried to pump up the numbers.

No big deal; how does it drive? Gear.Club Unlimited 3 adopts a no-frills simcade model, accessible but requiring a minimum of care to fully exploit its potential. The vehicle's behavior is predictable and quite plausible, while upgrades have a fairly concrete impact. What doesn't quite add up for me is the unnatural tendency of rear-wheel-drive cars (and thus the vast majority of the roster) to go into a powerslide at the first hint of gas in a corner. You expect a drift, and instead, the car suddenly straightens up or becomes uncontrollable. It's as if the developers started from an arcade base and then adjusted the aim along the way, leaving this less functional compromise to trajectory changes. No, I don't have traction control active.

Obviously, the AI is immune to this, as it paints trajectories with millimeter precision. Except when it finds nearby colleagues and piles up, ignoring common sense and good manners. The fact that opponents don't react to the player, don't offer any challenge, and there's not even aesthetic damage, makes every race a time trial without bite. In the vein of the good old Project Gotham Racing, the game rewards cleaner driving with Unlimited points, which can be used to multiply the rewards obtained. However, it's a somewhat arbitrary system, as it only takes into account speeds reached and "perfect sections." A perfect section for it, in fact, means not crashing into the wall at over a hundred miles an hour; the rest is fine; but woe betide if you put a wheel on the grass or touch another car, even if they're the ones ramming you.

The classic circuits and sprints, and the Tokyo Xtreme Racer-style duels complete themselves, while the timer is always very generous; monotony quickly sets in. The highway races are unequivocally rejected, boring and frustrating; the crowd's pace is random, and if multiple vehicles appear on the roadway, it's physically impossible to pass, forcing you to brake hard or crash, losing time and points (not that they're really needed).

I must say that, despite a modest amount of material, progression advances at a snail's pace. On paper, there are many events, they are short, and we can even skip quite a few, so they are cleared quickly, but the experience is so dull that the desire fades after a few chapters. In itself, the package offered by Gear.Club Unlimited 3 is okay, but compared to the competition, also considering a not-so-low list price, there is a lack of personality and refinement. The ideas for an appealing and "alternative" racing game are there, in the vein of the many AA titles that populated consoles a few generations ago, but there is work to be done on the execution.

The presentation is more than decent, with detailed models and evocative environments, ranging from the Japanese mountain regions, the French Riviera, and the long night straights of the Wangan. The sense of speed is good and the lighting is not bad, although afflicted by an annoying flicker whenever the headlights are turned on. Performance is mediocre, with the frame rate on my 4070 fluctuating from over 100 to 40-50 at random moments, due to Spartan optimization and the use of Easy Anti-Cheat, which in a primarily single-player game with no online is quite ridiculous. A problem that even affects the menus, which occasionally freeze for entire seconds. I did not experience stuttering, but it has been reported by numerous users on Steam.

The engine roar is a bit artificial, but overall satisfying. Some, however, are louder than others; a stock BRZ doesn't make all that noise. The soundtrack is forgettable. Completing the story will keep you busy for about ten hours, after which you'll have quick races where you can access the full arsenal. Multiplayer is limited to two players in local split-screen. The downgrade from Gear.Club Unlimited 2, which supported four players with online up to eight, is strange.