Ridge Racer unbounded was released in March of 2012, made by Bugbear Entertainment and Published by Bandai Namcom , the game had a mediocre critical reception, and a lot of people blame this (Undeserving in my opinion) for killing the Ridge Racer series, and while I do agree this isn't a perfect game, I am in the minority that believes this is a good game.
but before explain why I find this game fun, I better explain why I am replaying and reviewing this game to begin with, a group of international scientist, made a research on the effects of music on the reproduction of Mosquitos, more precisely Aedes aegypti,in this study they found that female mosquitos where less likely to reproduce and collect blood when listing to Scary Monsters And Nice Sprites by Skrillex.
This is a funny scientific find but WTF does this has to do with Ridge Racer unbounded you ask, well after I read it, I reminded myself of how this game has this specify music in it , and how much I enjoyed playing it, so I had a urge to replay this game again.
Gameplay
The game as you can imagine is a Arcade Racing game, the structure is pretty simple you have list of event, each is grouped with 7 other events which is part of a "district" in the city, however to unlock a next event in a city you need to get to a point threshold.
That wouldn't be a issue, but sometimes you finished all the previews events in a district and got 3 stars on all of them , but didn't unlock the next race because you didn't get enough points by breaking stuff and doing drifts, so you have to repeat a event you already had won to get more points, in fairness to the game this only happened to me once or twice during the campaign, but this shouldn't be a thing at all.
In this games you have a variety of events , going from the main racing mode, Shindo racing, Frag attack , Time attack and Drift, events are generally really short too, 5 minutes max, so it isn't much or a pain if you have to restart them for some dumb reason like Crashing in the final corner.
Before explain each of them I probably should how does this game works, thankfully this part will pretty short because it's pretty easy game to understand, at the bottom right of the scream you have your nitros/boost meter, doing actions like Drifting, Air riding and Fraging (This is how this game calls take down) will refill that metter, when the meter is full you will be able to use the boost, which not only will make your car go faster as you can imagine, but it will also make you be able to smash certain walls, to create shortcuts and being able to Frag enemies, this means that the ability of taking enemies down is locked behind using this game's boost, many people like to point this as a negative, but I think this is a refreshing take on the Arcade racing game formula, it makes you think how to use boost strategically and how to optimize your routes around it, I think many people don't like this because they expect something like Burnout, but they get something different, where you can't just use nitros whenever you feel like and can slam to the enemies willy-nilly.
Another thing that I like to point out about this game has multiple car , that you can chose before each race (with some rare exceptions) they are all different from each other, you unlock them as you level up, you gain XP and levels by doing races, my biggest complaint is that bigger car (The Coup SUV and pick up truck, I don't know their actual name) feels like a battle to control them, I know they are supposed to have bad handling, but it feels to the point that I am fight with my controller to get them to corner and drift, and some car have the opposite problem where they wheel spin all the time specially at lower speeds, but again this could be my skill issue.
but anyway what I think about each event type in this game.
Domination races are the main racing events, they are the most common and are my favorite event type in this game.
Shindo racing are like Domination races, but Boost in this mode work more like Nitros in other games, where it only makes you faster but it doesn't actually give you powers, which means it's really fucking boring, no only that during those events you can only drive yellow or white cars for some reason, which makes the worst racing type in this game.
Frag attack is pretty simple you have to frag a certain amount of opponents in a short period of time, they can be pretty hard to get all 3 stars, but it's really fun to use boost and just destroy random enemies, in some events of the same type instead of Driving a regular car you drive a truck which is really funny.
Time attack as you can imagine is just a mode where you try to get the fastest time you can, with the twist that you must find way to use boost to beat the time the game gives you , also cops are there, and they can sometimes be a pain in the ass to deal with, but they can be useful to get boost.
Drift is also as you imagine, just a simple model where you have to get the most drift points in the shortest amount of time possible with the added bonus that drift will extend the time limit by how long it lasted.
Overall I think this is a fun racing game with an alright handling models, and good variety, even the worst game model, Shindo racing is blessed by the fact that just driving in this game and doing drifts is fun.
lastly racing tracks on this game work very differently from any racing game I have played before , instead of having mutiple unique racing circutes, this game has sections that are share between all events, but they are put in whatever order the devs felt like, you can even make these tracks like the devs did in the in game track creation mode, this is probably a bad explanation but I don't know how to explain it well, anyway what this means is that every event in this game has a unique layout from each other, but the actual envirament and moment to moment racing feel the same across mutiple events.
Graphics
Racing games where always blessed by the fact that you don't have to make human models, and this game is no different, even if it was made by a small studio in Finland, it still looks beautiful, it was beautiful when it came out and it still does 13 years later, my only issue is that it has too much bloom and filters, specially during some events, but maybe that's to mascaraed this game's ugly edges.
I also love how minimalist this game UI is, the only thing that are displayed is your position in the race and how much boost you have, other information like how many laps do you have and how far behind or ahead you are from the opponents is hidden and only show in the environment.
This game feels oddly charming for me, because it feels squarely on how I think a PS3/Xbox 360 game looks like, this is like how a lot of people feel about GT 1 , 2 or Ridge racer type 4, people feel nostalgic about them because they are the peak of a PS1 in terms of visuals
Music
Unlike other RR, this game doesn't have a original sound track, all of it's music are either license music from Ridge Racer 6 and 7 or popular electronic music from the time, I generally don't like license music in game, in game like Grand Turismo they feel like a minus from the experience, and I much rather a racing game have it's own original sound track like other ridge racer games or Enthusia professional racing , how you feel about this game music is directly related to how you feel about listening to Skrillex in 2025, however, where credit is do EDM do fit this game really well, so I may just give this game a pass for not having a OST.
Story
There's 2 cutceness in this game, one in the begging where they explain that you are part of a lawless racing group called the Unbounded and another at the end that coungratulations you for destroying the city, perosnally I would rather it not being there to being with, because it adds nothing to the game.Replaying ability
Aside from me wanting to revisit this game because of Skrillex of all things, there's no reason to replay this game if you had already beaten it and got 3 stars in all events, the multiplayer server of this game have long being shutdown, which was supposed to be the reason to come back to this game t, and now that it's dead you can't even get all achievements of it anymore.
Pros
- + Fun driving
- + Pretty Graphics
- + EDM music
- + Early 2010 nostalgia bait
- + Truck gooo vrroooo
- + Boost and Frag machanic
Cons
- - Boring racing mode
- - Dead multiplayer
- - Certain car are unfun to drive
- - Skrillex in 2025 (This is not a serious entry)
9
Gameplay
I think many people misunderstand that this game isn't RR , Bournout or even flat out, and that you enjoyment of it will be 10x better if you treat it like it's own thing
8
Graphics
It looks like a pretty Xbox 360 game, too much filters and too little variety are my only complaint.
1
Story
Waste of time and money from the devs.
8
Sound
Aside from the meme of this game having him, in it's music list, i think EDM fits this game perfectly fine, but you don't like them , you can just listen on old RR music instead.
5
Replayability
Racing game but it's nature, have a fun pick up and play thing going for them, sadly for this game there isn't much reason to got back to it after doing the campaing
8
out of 10
Overall
This game is often find for very cheap on steam during sale, and for how little you can get it for, I don't a see a good reason why an arcade racing fan shouldn't give this a try.
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