Gear.Club Unlimited 3 review

Racing games are wonderfully abundant. If your seeking accessibility, Forza Horizon’s open worlds are plentiful, while anyone craving some realism can spend hundreds of hours mastering the nuances of Assetto Corsa Competizione or iRacing. Between those extremes are plenty of polished hybrids like Gran Turismo 7 and Forza Motorsport. Largely, racing is a rich genre with plenty of options for nearly every preference, leaving leaving Gear.Club Unlimited 3 to struggle with finding distinction. Sure, Eden Games’ latest effort is competent in most areas, but the game rarely excels at any of them.

That mediocrity is a bit disappointing because the game’s car handling makes a welcoming first impression. Certainly, steering is responsive, yet has just enough depth to ensure it doesn’t feel like your driving a bunch of go-karts. Here, the cars communicate when they start to lose traction, making it easy to initiate a drift. And undoubtedly, there’s some satisfaction found in a slide as you careen around a long corner. With just a bit of practice, you can drift around curves with the kind of finesse that makes you feel like a world-class race car driver, even if the game’s forgiving physics are doing much of the work.

40+ Ways to Break Speed Limits

Unlimited 3’s selection includes more than 40 licensed vehicles from European and Japanese manufacturers, including Alfa Romeo, BMW, Bugatti, Honda, Mazda, Nissan, Porsche, and Subaru. Yes, it’s a modest garage compared to Gran Turismo 6’s 1200+ automotive armada, but the roster includes quite a few recognizable sports cars rather than filler. The different models are attractively detailed, especially inside the dealership and your customizable club headquarters. Meanwhile, mechanical upgrades are split across workshops, while paints, wheels, and body components provide a taste of customization.

That said, tuning isn’t the focus here. Although some career events can impose performance prerequisites that require an upgrade or purchase, your laidback competition rarely makes these improvements feel absolutely necessary. If you’re seeking extracurricular, expanding the club hiring techs, and installing some decorations provide some distraction, but rarely feel compelling.

Unlimited 3’s campaign attempts to generate motivation with a storyline rooted in Japanese automobile culture. After letting you drive a modified Mazda RX-7, the game sends you back to an entry-level vehicle and tasks you with building a racing club. Everything from new mechanics, drivers, and racers, show up as your organization expands all the way to France. But between the basic personalities and text-based conversations, the plot exists to move you toward the next series of events.

Schooling Traffic

Those events are spread out across 50 courses across Japan and the French Mediterranean. Expectedly, conventional circuit races and time trials dominate bu occasionally you’ll face special challenges that put you inside a specific car. Duel events are a bit more interesting. Inspired by Japanese highway racers, these contests give both drivers a meter that drains whenever one falls behind, eventually KO’ing the driver caught too far behind. Highway Rush delivers sustained sprint through traffic, rewarding speed, deft lane changes, and dangerous driving. Finally, Infinite Drive provides a relaxed alternative without objectives, with free play and local split-screen rounding out the options.

Arguably, weaving between vehicles on a Tokyo expressway is where Unlimited 3 shines brightest. Here, traffic gives speed a sense of danger that’s lacking from the shorter circuit races. The one downside is that commuters are oblivious to your presence plowing into you as they change lanes. And while a clean-driving score discourages collisions, impacts aren’t convincing. You’ll habitually ricochet off barriers with no visible damage to product placement. Anyone else miss the days when racing games modeled damage?

CPU opponents introduce a different kind of problem. They tend to be quick along the straights but brake excessively early before corners. This results in traffic patches in corners that routinely allow you to jump up a few positions. That said, your rivals can occasionally exhibit dubious amounts of speed after falling behind. This combinative doesn’t make for satisfying racing; nothing worse that being beat by a dumb CPU-driver seizing the advantage of rubber-banding.

Under the Hood

While Gear.Club Unlimited 3 delivers everything from ultrawide support, HDR, and multiple uposcalers, it’s hardware requirements are a bit steep. The official recommendation lists an RTX 4070 or RX 6900 XT for 1080p at high settings and 60 frames per second. And while I was able to coax a slightly more modest GPU into similar output, scaling things lower introducing some frame pacing issues.

Surprisingly, the Steam Deck is capable of producing a playable experience. On low settling with XeSS Balanced, the game gave a reliable 40 frames per second. Sure, the resulting image is a bit soft and battery life will hover around the 90 minute mark, but Unlimited 3 can be enjoyed on the go. It’s hardly ideal and there are plenty of better, low-poly racers out there but kudos to Eden Games for making it work.

A Racer that Lacks Drive

At it’s best, Gear.Club Unlimited 3 controls well and occasionally generates some thrill on its traffic-filled highways. But its forgettable story, simplistic opponent AI, and lack of distinction make it a rather forgettable efforts in a well-developed genre. Eden Games has crafted a capable racer without any kind of specialty, which feel like a commuter car parked next a lot of performance machines. I’d advice taking this one off the lot only if you can find a need in your library and a irresistible sale.

Gear.Club Unlimited 3 was played on PC with review code provided by the publisher.