Gear.Club Unlimited

Unfortunately, it appears that every racing game installment after Forza Motorsport 7 has fallen woefully short of the quality of that game. Take Gear.Club Unlimited, released on the Nintendo Switch for example. This game has all the substance of Forza, but none of the heart and soul! The arcade style controls and variety of racing tracks do little to deviate from the standard racing-game formula. The graphics are slightly above average, but nowhere near the Nintendo Switch's actual potential.

 It's not that the game is without any merit. While the tracks render at below average frame-rates, the cars have excellent models. Eden Games gathered real-life brand licensees to represent your vehicles, and the selection of transports is expansive. Unfortunately, the arcade-style controls are rudimentary, simplistic, and leave little to the imagination. Poor steering controls, lack of any meaningful peripheral support, and oversensitive button mechanics hamper the experience at every turn. 

None of the cars parts and pieces are upgradable, a severe downgrade from titles such as Forza Motorsport. Every race follows the same stale format. The race begins, and the AI vehicles shoot ahead of you. Yet all of them are racing at the same speed! An utterly unrealistic loophole which removes all sense of urgency or challenge from any race! Within 20 seconds, it's easy to pull ahead and your miles ahead of minutes. That is truly pathetic! Most racing games such as Forza and Mario Kart make your opponents at least competent, whereas Gear.Club's approach to intelligent AI merely is, "fuck it!"  Even worse, there is zero online multiplayer support in this game, so if you get bored racing against subpar AI your out of luck!

 Gear.Club Unlimited falls flat at every turn against its competitors. The drift controls are so oversensitive, that precise turn mechanics are skewed, janky and unresponsive. Shiny graphics mean nothing if the gameplay is mediocre and Gear.Club Unlimited is without question a below average game next to quality titles such as  Mario Kart 8 Deluxe or Forza Motorsport 7.

Final Verdict:
Graphics: 7/10
Gameplay: 5/10
Sound: 4/10
Replay Value: 3/10
Overall 4/10 (Mediocre)