As both the game's title and developer Bugbear Entertainment stress, Ridge Racer: Unbounded is not Ridge Racer 8. So, what does the curious subtitle bring with it other than the surprise that it is, in fact, a real word?

On the one hand, to be unbounded is to provide in abundance: certainly the variety of game modes, customisation options and wealth of creation tools of both the basic and advanced track editors fulfil this part of the offbeat moniker.

There's the carnage of Dominate mode, which encourages the creation of short cuts through the destruction of sign-posted environmental targets; this is made possible thanks to a power bar that's fed by indulging the series' iconic drift ability. Survival mode is based on the same premise, but being taken out by another driver, or colliding head on with an unbreakable structure, puts you out of the race for good.

Drift Attack is a less aggressive affair: a race against the clock in which drifting is essential to add precious seconds to the decreasing timer to enable you to finish the course. This is deliciously juxtaposed by Frag Attack, which offers up the multi-tonne Behemoth 200 truck for taking out a convoy of cop cars to earn time and points.

Online multiplayer features the same modes as offline single-player and revolves around the concept of player-owned cities. Each city contains between five and ten player-created tracks and Bugbear is indulging those that wish to throw a course together in a few minutes as well as the more dedicated virtual architect.

The advanced track editor provides options to place level furniture such as chicanes, ramps and genre-defying exploding red barrels, thus adding further layers to the basic building blocks of straights and corners. The game mode for each track is set by its creator, with Bugbear producer Joonas Laakso confident that each mode will be well represented by player-created events online.

"We're trying to deliver enough content so that each mode will find its own fans and people will find bits that they like and create events based on those modes," Laakso explains. "But we're not going to be limiting it, so I guess if we've not done our jobs correctly – and the other modes are crappy - then yes, there could be an imbalance in the modes people use to base their events on."
This is the second pertinent characteristic of Ridge Racer's subtitle, because something that is unbounded is also uncontrolled. In a bid to facilitate player-choice, Bugbear seems to be running the risk of certain elements of Ridge Racer's structure undermining its good intentions by allowing for too much freedom.


The level furniture available in the advanced track editor, for example: presented with an inexhaustible supply of exploding red barrels the temptation to place them on every corner, behind every breakable object and at the top of every ramp will prove too great for many gamers.

"Currently, it is possible to slow the frame-rate to a crawl by piling up your levels with 1,000 exploding barrels, for example," Laakso admits. "So, it's a question of whether we want to restrict that or perhaps have a warning message to say you're approaching the limit of acceptable frame-rate performance, we're not quite sure yet."

Indecision about how best to address potentially game-breaking, barrel-based avarice is one thing, but this uncertainty of approach extends to the basic track editor, too.

The requirement for every circuit to loop back to its starting tile, combined with what is currently an inadequate method of displaying the remaining memory available for track creation, means it's possible to run out of resources before the track is finished, necessitating the removal of earlier tiles to shorten and reshape the track.

However, the most problematic result of this apparent lack of moderation can currently be seen in straight-up multiplayer. The build we played supported six concurrent players but that was sometimes enough to quickly exhaust opportunities for careening through a building to open up a shortcut, which then remains open to all players for all subsequent laps.


With up to 12 players supported in the final game, there's the risk that the closing laps of a race might be devoid of incident, with other players having been there and done that before you've had the chance to blaze your own destructive trail through the environment. With tighter pacing and a little restraint, Bugbear could ensure that the feeling that "anything can happen" could be maintained throughout every race, not just the thrilling opening laps.
Bugbear Entertainment and Nacmo Bandai are taking a bold step in pushing this beloved franchise in a new direction but Ridge Racer: Unbounded is currently being undermined by its own good intentions and occasional inability to effectively communicate with the player. Encouragingly, the underlying game mechanics are enjoyable and the interface and pacing issues could yet be fixed ahead of its March release.

Ultimately then, Ridge Racer: Unbounded requires its limitless ambition to be reined in a little if it's to reach its full potential.

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