The Nintendo Switch doesn’t excel at car racing, though it’s not necessarily the fault of the developers. The lack of analogue triggers means that you can’t quite replicate the feeling of pressing the foot down on a pedal, and the relatively modest hardware prevents the graphics team from truly embracing the car porn that has become standard in the genre. That hasn’t stopped developers from trying, however, and Gear.Club Unlimited 3 is a particularly good effort.
In Gear.Club, you’ll be racing around parts of the landscape of both Japan and France. You’ll start off with one modest car, but soon, by winning races and completing objectives, you’ll be able to upgrade that car, and afford more powerful vehicles that will allow you to race against faster opponents and earn greater rewards. There’s a (terrible) story included, but really that’s just a way to bookend what is essentially a lengthy grind on a mission to collect-em-all.
There’s plenty to do there, with more than 40 cars and 50 tracks packed into the game. It’s just as well that the single player is so comprehensive, because there is no online multiplayer at this point in time (there is split screen for local play, and online leaderboards for time trials). When you’re done with the story mode there isn’t much else to do but set up races against AI or try and beat your best times in Free mode, but again, with the story mode being so lengthy I don’t feel like the game was short changing me either.
For the most part, I enjoyed the tracks. You’re always driving on roads, but there’s a distinct visual difference between Japan and France, and a good blend of loops, rally-style courses and tracks with traffic added in. The only tracks I didn’t enjoy were the latter, as the density of regular road vechiles is heavy, making it almost impossible to weave your way through without collisions. Those don’t put an end to the race, but if you race cleanly you earn points that results in additional resources at the end of the race. It feels impossible to race cleanly on those road races, leaving you feeling like the game design is in conflict with itself for those races.
There’s also a good variety in the kinds of races. Sometimes, you’ll be against the clock, and required to finish a course by yourself within a given time. Then there are duels, which pit you against one AI opponent with a regular countdown. Whoever is behind at the end of each countdown loses some “health” and when one person’s “health” hits zero, the other claims victory. There are also standard races featuring anything from four to a dozen cars or so.
For the most part, the racing is smooth, and sits halfway between arcade and simulation racing. You’ll need to stick to the ideal racing lines and break and accelerate smoothly into corners, but the engine is not overly punitive on errors, and my favourite trick of using another car to assist a turn by deliberately crashing into it is a viable one (assuming you’re comfortable with losing some points for not driving cleanly).
However, I will say that the AI is can “cheat,” and it’s frustrating at times. If you’re racing well, and in the lead, it is almost inevitable that in the last third of the race the AI racers will magically catch up with you. Make one mistake then and they’ll zip past you with little chance of catching back up to them.
Their ability to do this seems tied to the rating of the car you’re driving. For example, let’s say I was comfortably winning a race with a car with a 360 or so rating (this is what will happen to you a lot in the early game, in particular). If one of the AI cars has a higher rating, then they’re very likely to be able to overtake in the late game. But, if you then head into the mechanics between races and upgrade the car to a 385 or so, so it’s now the highest rated car on the track, suddenly the rubber-banding AI isn’t nearly as threatening.
I appreciate that developers of sports games need to make sure the stats count, but there are times with Gear.Club where it does come across as arbitrary, and the outcome of a race is predetermined at the start, regardless of how well you actually drive. It’s still fun because the core racing loop is such an enjoyable one, but more serious racing fans might find this frustrating.
The game looks nice on the Nintendo Switch 2 in handheld mode. There are certainly better looking racing games out there, but the colours are rich, the details in the cars are nice, and there’s good lighting effects, particularly when racing at dusk or night. You do have the option between “Quality” and “Performance Mode” graphics, with “Quality” locking the frame rate at 30fps while Performance Mode gets it up to 60fps, but with some visual fuzziness added in. Given it’s a racing game I’d recommend Performance Mode to most people, where the 60fps is pretty steady, and the speed means details in the background are generally unnecessary anyway.
There is a lot that you can potentially get out of Gear.Club 3, especially if you enjoy time trial challenges, where you’ll get a lot out of the large number of tracks and online leaderboards. Collecting all the cars and then playing around with them is a lot of fun, and ideal for pick-up-and-play sessions. It might not be a must play, but it’s one of those games that you’ll likely find yourself spending more time with than you realise.
