Stats for standard City Creator weigh in at 150 blocks to tinker with. All built using in-game objects and 3D camera pans of the track, its different enough from the core campaign to offer enthusiasts - who its hoped will be the life-blood of the online community past launch - enough options to keep them occupied and other gamers playing. A brilliant sequence of alternating walls and tiny one car gaps that'd not look out of place in a pinball machine. Huge loop-de-loops, triple jumps atop tight lines of cargo containers. What we see is more Hot Wheels and Micro Machines in style. On a whim, he's marked each unseen link between with a repeating towering dinosaur prop. Pre-event Lakso has stacked the same block of track in one continuous line to emphasis the heaviness of customisation. References now FPS in nature: Halo's Forge World the closest as quick example. The ignition for long-running community lies with the Advanced version. The game will ship with two City Creators: one offers tracks in big lego block squares to attach together for easy fix. Hope hinged on Unbounded's until now hidden mode. In a talk with producer Joonas Lakso, we chat about the need for legacy, the requirement that studios need to deliver more than a single player campaign and the difficulty that brings.
Yet with the genre's trailblazer Burnout relegated to the garage as its studio chase the Need For Speed, and possible competitors Black Rock and Bizarre consigned to the chop shop, Unbounded has been given an easy out from unfair comparisons in a genre once running low on fuel, now riding on fumes.īut given what has happened to the competition, there's definite pressure to deliver. Its a beautiful car-collision of different styles, franchises and themes.
Alterations that eschew the flavour the R.R franchise yet feel fundamentally correct for Unbounded. References are Criterion rather than Turn 10. Races through construction sites, main streets, into buildings all the amore angry and edgy than purebred racing stock: event names mark the tonal shift - Domination, Survival, Attack, Frag. Colour palates for Shattered Bay's many streets darker yet no less vivid. Tracks are wider, crashes into the sides halting your velocity like a magnet, both crafted to fit with the slams and shunts of the now aggressive competition. Liberal exuberance in its two-ton metallic flings compared to previously controlled and measured wheel spins exciting in its voracity, but suitably bizarre in the extremity of drifts' angle and length.Īssimilation of the new technique complete with a child-like laugh and wide smile, it was time to turn attention to the why - and how the rest fitted in around it. Keep the wheels on track and chassis from crushing against the nearest wall.Ī drift brewed through Bugbear's distillery rather than previous Ridge Racers. The resulting slide loose and wild, early-stage Parkinson taps in the opposite direction of the drift to keep it under control. Lighting fast punch of handbrake, confident tug of stick, reapplication of accelerator a split-second later. All else - the explosions, the competitors, the track decor non-essential to the curves - background noise only.įourth race found the sweet spot. Every Ridge Racer I've got behind the wheel of starts the same: catapult into the first lap's worth of sharp corners and fire through multiple combinations of brake tugs, accelerator releases, and sharp stick pulls until the correct sequence is found.