Riders Republic Review

"Extreme Sports"

Multiplayer

November 4, 2021 at 9:07pm
By Jason Stettner

This is a multiplayer focused extreme sports game. I’d consider it to basically be GenZ the game considering it tries very hard with the youthful lingo and attitude to hit well with that audience. Or at least it did from my perspective as the opening story elements felt really awkward in that regard. Whatever the case, once the coddling you opening is past you’re free to openly explore the vast world that this game has to offer.

You’re able to join over fifty players in large scale multiplayer as you explore the various hills and regions that are present. It feels larger than that though since you’ll see so many shadows of players out there doing things to the extreme. If you do want some direct racing there are these really cool battle royale like large races which include sixty-four players going at it. At launch on Xbox this was limited to thirty-two players which was disappointing, hopefully that gets fixed later on.

Anyways, you’re building a legacy here as some unknown random racer as you just tackle a plethora of different events. It’s like candy being littered everywhere as you’re constantly getting new missions to play. On top of that, with player creation elements you can go further to play what others have put together which is interesting. It’s neat to see more community driven options being added to these types of games.

There’s not really any specific story structuring outside of the opening and a minor big event here or there so it’s just open ended exploration and sporting. There are some special activities you can do though which includes this weird shack series of challenges and also a sponsor area too. If you want to compete against others you can get the options on individual races or specific types of competition from the main hub area where you go for race or style battles.

Gameplay

This is as mentioned a combination of extreme sports. You get various types of biking; snowboarding/skiing and flying. I note various because the types will change as you unlock more events or get access to weirder items over time. They’re still within the same lineage of those core concepts, but they do mix things up slightly.

The game also features varying levels of controls to choose from including more simplistic options and also fairly complex ones. You’ll have to play around with the options to find one that fits your style. I found that more control for myself was better than having everything automated. The game does feel very fast, and it also looks rather gorgeous with a grand sense of scale.

You get to see some massive iconic US mountains across the areas of Yosemite, Zion and the Brice Canyon for example. There are a range of unique biomes here ranging from snowy tops, to deep rocky peaks and even a rather lovely green valley. These spots are filled with nature, and some human impact including strangely Ford branded vehicles. You’re able to explore this all freely, using whatever sort of transportation that you’d like to. It all loaded rather fast, and again was quite visually impressive.

The color palette pops, with minimal visual pop-in and in general it’s a very technically intriguing game. If you’re on the Xbox Series X you’re getting a 1620p resolution at 60fps with HDR support so it plays smoothly and looks very crisp. It’s fairly grand in terms of the scale and they put together what’s largely quite a fun time.

It all runs very well with speedy loads time and instant access to what feels like an unlimited quantity of events. There are also collectibles to gather out in the world. Everything will feed into a star system, basically even just finishing a race and that’s how you get access to even further events.

It’s fairly straight forward, and in being something that’s live service I imagine they’ll trickle out more content over time. I should also note that this game does have various customization microtransactions present, some customization aspects can be earned in-game however. Just none of the really cool ones it seems. I would also imagine it looks like seasonal content like with battles passes is present too.

The Conclusion

Riders Republic is a great extreme sports offering with tons of activities to take part in and a very impressive seamless multiplayer world to explore. I’m not sure you’d really run out of things to do in this one, it does feel very vast and almost endless.

If you’re into any of the sports you’ll find more than enough options strewn across the map to enjoy them all. I actually found the jet pack flying to be particularly fun, as were some of the sillier small games that the Shackdaddy challenges provided. This all looks visually impressive and generally quite gorgeous.

It’s large in scale, with just a ton of things to offer. If you like the core gameplay loop you can easily waste away hours playing. I would have liked more of a focus on the story aspects as that could have went further, but for what it provides it was a fine time for sure.

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Riders Republic Review on Xbox Series X
Review Code Provided by Ubisoft

Rating Overall: 7.8