![]() ![]() Even when you're driving badly you'll regularly receive access to new cars, new districts and new races, as well as constant reassurance. Thankfully, despite the difficulty, the game is generous with achievements and unlocks. Either of these options is mildly troubling. My brain either switched off for 10 seconds, or the game gives helpful nudges to offscreen AI racers. A moment later it updated and read “4 seconds ahead”. But in one instance, a sign in front told me I was “13 seconds ahead” of 2nd place. It's a really nice bit of visual design, as effective here as it is in Splinter Cell: Conviction. When you're driving, the lap number and the time between you and the nearest car is displayed in big, bold letters on the architecture around the track. ![]() I also – and I can't confirm this – have a slight fear that the game uses rubber banding. Again you might drop 10 places with no chance of catching up. Similarly, sometimes you'll be driving well and a single mistake will see you wreck your car, come to a dead stop, or spin out in a corner and end up facing the wrong way. It's not quite Mario Kart-levels of frustration, but it's sometimes enough to take you from placing in the top three to dead last. You'll be driving well and a rival car will frag you from behind, knocking you out of the race for a few seconds. That's in part because Unbounded is hard, in a way that Ridge Racer games always were, but in a way that few arcade-style racers have had the guts to be since. Even now, after all I've played it, I have this uncomfortable sense that maybe I'm doing it wrong. There's no in-game tutorial that explains any of this, which is bad enough, but the fuzziness that exists between success and failure means that you might never work out your mistake. It makes all the difference in the world. It turns out that while you can drift without it, holding the drift button means you keep more of your speed in the corner. It'll sort of look the same, only now you'll start to win races. ![]() So you do, and it's not an instant revelation. Then you'll read something on t'internet that says that you should hold down the drift button all the way through the corner. You can keep trying, and trying, and trying, and for all the world it'll look like you're doing it right. Massage the accelerator and the brake correctly and you can impressively and satisfyingly exit straight out of each corner. Take a corner at speed, tap the drift button, and you can throw the rear end of your car into the corner. Each one of these actions refills your boost meter, which means that by the time you hit the ground, you can trigger it again. Activate it on the next bend and, if you've timed it well, the thrust will extend your drift (Achievement get!), let you frag a rival car (Achievement get!), smash through a roadside billboard (Achievement get!), and launch up a ramp to catch a few seconds of air (Achievement get!). Perfectly execute a drift around a corner and you'll fill your boost meter. Avoid trouble, race in a perfect line and, paradoxically, you'll do worse than you would if you careen into concrete, brick and metal.Īll of these actions make winning races in Unbounded about perfecting a special kind of messy finesse. Using it at the right time can give you the extra speed you need to close the gap between you and the race leaders, the power you need to create shortcuts by punching through certain destructible buildings, or to frag other cars off the track in spectacular Burnout-style crashes. Filling that boost meter completely, via perfect power slides, clean overtaking or hitting roadside paraphernalia, lets you supercharge your car for a few seconds. Crashing into any of these obstacles won't slow you down, but will help fill your boost meter. The second comes in the form of concrete pillars, low walls and lamp posts. ![]()
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