To the X-treme!
Whether it is ripping down the side of a mountain as your bike is barely holding it together, pulling off insane aerial tricks while dressed up as a dinosaur or giraffe, or flying hundreds of feet up in the open blue sky, Riders Republic is a vastly engaging experience from start to finish, featuring a small but enjoyable offering of extreme sports across a varied selection of biomes. As a successor to Steep, Riders Republic will test your ability to make split-second maneuvers as you attempt to pull off insane tricks and achieve that podium finish in style.
Riders Republic mixes up a series of extreme sports into one vast open-world, one where you can literally bike from a snow-capped mountain to a sun-scorched desert in a span of minutes, or seconds if you strap on a rocket pack and burn fuel as you blitz across the map. There are landmarks to visit, old extreme sports relics to discover, and a ton of Rider cash to earn, decking out your extreme sports champion in a series of outfits and costumes, even if some of the best are locked behind spending real cash.
Much like the Forza Horizon series, Riders Republic places you as an up-and-coming would-be champion during a festival built around a singular event. You'll have sponsors to win over with your determination and skill, and a few characters to set you on that journey. If I had to pick one major criticism of Riders Republic, it's the opening hour of the game, being guided around by Suki and Brett, your main points of contact in a narrative that is largely abandoned after the tutorial ends.
The biggest issue with these characters is the cringe-inducing dialogue and phrases that they won't stop shoving down your throat. From pronouncing "custom" as "Koo-Stahm" to the constant barrage of trying to sound hip and cool, it's immensely tiring and any time I interacted with them, or the voice-overs as you approach events, I would mute the game and put on a few podcasts. To add to my indulgence of listening to a variety of said podcasts during my time here is the awful soundtrack that seems to blast the same few songs over and over again, not to mention featuring a collection of tunes that in no way are capable of landing the tone of an extreme sports event, such as featuring the worst cover of "Gangster's Paradise" I've ever heard. Honestly, I think it made my ears bleed, actually.
Once you get past the opening tutorial or handle the rest of the audio moments in your own way, the actual gameplay of what Riders Republic offers is damn impressive. At almost any moment, you can swap to any piece of equipment you want, carving your own path to any event, fast travel in a blink of an eye, or simply explore to track down any one of a few hundred collectibles or the challenging danger events that can truly test how capable you are in the entire variety of equipment available.
Riders Republic has you tearing down the side of a mountain in a variety of bikes, snowboards, or skis, as well as taking to the skies in rocket wings, a gliding wingsuit, and floating around with a full parachute. You’ll also find old relics, or novelty items such as pizza delivery bikes, entire plane engines to strap to your back, or short stubby skis that don’t quite look like they would serve their purpose. You can also drive a snowmobile around as well, but sadly there didn’t seem to be events tailored to it, which is a massive disappointment. Each gear item, when unlocked, can be swapped at any point, making traversal from one event to the next a constant array of crazy, especially the vertical take-offs in the rocket wing. However; it is the fact that X is both your interact button and also taking off in the rocket wing on the PS5 controller where tracking down the relics would always see me shoot off and crash into something after collecting them, making it one of the more hilarious glitches I found while exploring.
Event types range across all competitive excursions, with some shared across all three methods of event. You have time trials and trick modes available for biking and snow events, whereas the aerial events lack any sort of trick modes altogether. While I certainly enjoyed the time trial and tricks modes, the real fun of the game, at least for myself, came in the form of the actual races, where you’ll race alongside friends or ghost AI in an effort for that first-place finish. The actual races sadly felt few and far between in some cases and while the other modes are fun, they lack a certain something when it’s just you racing down the mountain on your lonesome, or pulling away from the cliff’s surface as you boost through the checkpoint rings in your rocket wing.
If you have paid any attention to the marketing of the game, you’ll notice that every commercial or ad showcases a group of colorful and crazy players, all dressed up in a variety of outfits and equipment, all racing down the mountain in unison. While we don’t quite get the freedom to tear down alongside other snowboarders while on a bike, or above them in the rocket wing, the massive mega races are a true highlight of the game, showcasing 64 players all ripping through packed courses and multiple gear changes as you try desperately to finish before the timer runs out. While there are certainly some collision issues due to how many players are colliding into and around you, I still found these events to be insanely fun and looked forward to them when they would pop up every half hour.
While it is possible to stick to the sport you like, you’re not going to get that far in exploring everything you want to do here. It’s a shame there wasn’t a career mode where you could just attach yourself to one single type of sport, allowing players who want a certain experience to not feel let down by feeling they are forced to play in events they are not enjoying. Thankfully, progress is progress, and you don’t have to win each event to see yourself through the game. However, winning and pulling off any of the three offered challenges to each race will catapult you up the standings that much quicker and make reaching the Riders Ridge International, the holy grail of what you’re attempting to reach, a more likely outcome.
As you progress, you’ll earn stars, which roll out special rewards and more events as you reach certain milestones. These are offers by completing certain challenges around the map, tracking down collectibles, or simply by taking part of all modes, online or simply by yourself. It’s not too hard to reach around 400+ stars, but hitting that 750 requirement to unlock the big event that is teased to you at the start certainly does take some work, and I’m not too sure that the majority of players are really going to see it through, despite the game being a really good time.
Riders Republic has a decent selection of accessibility modes to make racing across all events a bit easier for those that just want to treat it as more of a fun arcade experience. Landings and grinding have a variety of auto or manual modes, air control on the bike being easier to handle, as well as how all tricks are performed with buttons, or through the right analog stick if you would rather set it to operate that way. The game also features crossplay which makes the larger mega races always packed, and you can set different options to each race that greatly increase your experience earnings if you take on a greater challenge.
The overall control on each bike, snowboard, set of skis, rocketpacks, and wingsuit are certainly going to vary as they don’t have a universal series of controls. Bikes have you managing a stamina gauge for sprinting hard down the path, to your rocket pack having something similar in your boost. I never felt like I had full control on the wingsuit, and honestly, if I was to cut any sport from the game, it would be that one in a heartbeat. Snowboarding and Skiing can feel like you don’t have the same maneuvering as you do on the bike, but after a few races, I found my footing and started to enjoy them a lot more. Biking is still my favorite by a mile, and the ability to drift around corners made each and every race just pure joy and honestly, offers my favorite downhill biking experience across any video game so far.
Should you mess up and bash into a tree, fly off a cliff, or smack face-first into the side of a mountain, you can either mash down the button to get back in the race, or rewind your past attempt and try it again. While Forza Horizon has the same approach to rewinding that failed attempt, it rewinds the entire allotment of racers and not just you, something that sadly, Riders doesn't do here. While you will rewind back to a moment in the race that works for you, your AI opponents will continue on, making it less of an impressive feature and more a tease of what it should be doing in the first place.
I also found that you can miss the checkpoint lanes by a fraction of a pixel and fail to pass through them, to awkward starts and stops as you get stuck in a rut and cannot back up quick enough to really get back in the race. It’s small annoyances like this that add up to a lot of frustration and had the rewind feature worked for you and your AI opposition like we’ve seen in Forza Horizon, I wouldn’t mind the accidental misses or moments where I got stuck. I also wish that some of the checkpoints changed color or visual indicators during the brighter desert races as they are almost impossible to see in the blazing sun, or even when you are racing through a tight canyon and don’t have a strong indication of where your next checkpoint is. None of these issues really make the game unplayable but are issues that can be addressed if the team opts to correct a few of them through quality of life improvements down the road.
While there is a colorful hub location to interact with, everything here is pretty much accessible through the main menu, making the spaced-out location feel more decorative than functional. You have a shop that rotates out costumes and various apparel, but there are just not enough options to really take note of, and waiting an entire day for a shuffling of new items may not really pay off as so many of the outfits are only accessible through using real money. There is a creations tab for customized races made by other players, best photo’s to download and like, to sponsors that have a variety of daily challenges to take on and complete for rewards.
After you win races and push through other avenues of events and modes, you’re going to unlock a variety of gear that have stats differences across various things like speed, sprint, or the grip it has on the road. You’ll be swimming in gear as you move from event to event, and while the more hilarious efforts are put into the “flunkies” tab such as the grandpa bike, or the paper airplane wingsuit, the variety in the standard fare of your equipment is more to less par for the course.
The last major component to Riders Republic is through the more structured multiplayer activities away from the main events you’ll find all over the map. These modes are tailored more towards joining up with other players in the form of various races or trick battles. You’ll have the straight downhill races or those that have you rack up scores as you perform tricks down the mountain to an arena-based trick mode where you’ll perform tricks on ramps and grind rails in an effort to take over the map. I think these modes are fine enough, especially the races, but the trick battle one is where I feel it could be fun if you played with friends, coordinating with your teammates instead of playing with silent randoms. The biggest issue in multiplayer comes from the fact there is no skill-based or gear-based matchmaking, and since gear all has stats, you can see yourself going up against those with drastically better gear, making any chance for top five to be pretty limiting unless you can outperform them in your weak-ass gear.
While there is a lot of noticeable pop-in on the PS4 side of things, the game ran damn well on the PS5, apart from some minor moments where you'll notice a few blink and you miss it pop-in textures when you fast travel. The PS4 would see bland textures during some faster moments of some races, wheras I never really saw anything of the sort when rocking it on the much newer and better hardware. I don’t think the game is a visual stunner when it comes to graphical clarity, but the color range and aesthetic is certainly impressive and does make for a very bright and engaging experience nonetheless. I do wish we had far more variety in outfits and ways to customize our racers, but as you put more time into the game and pray for some good gear to hit the store, then that may boost in what the game can offer from that angle and may impress later on down the road.
Riders Republic is certainly an enjoyable experience even if I have some issues with it. I personally think the biking and snow-based events are its best attraction, especially due to the variety of events you have to take on. I think if the series were to continue, I’d love to see more sports added, such as being able to finally use that snowmobile to race, or even skateboarding to make an appearance as well. I think the game is in desperate need of some quality of life updates, but many of those issues are pretty minor in the grand scheme of things. I like the idea of the customization and the shop, to make your racer stand out, but feel it is too focused on its microtransaction route to really feel like a natural part of the experience. Riders Republic is pretty damn fun to play, and while we have had a few extreme sports games pop up over the last few years, this is one of the few that manages to juggle them all together in a flashy and neon spectacle that impresses around almost every hard right corner.
Developer - Ubisoft, Ubisoft Milan, Ubisoft Annecy. Publisher - Ubisoft, Ubisoft Milan. Released - October 27th, 2021. Available On - PlayStation 4/5, Xbox One/Series X/S, Google Stadia, Amazon Luna, Windows. Rated - (T) Lyrics. Platform Reviewed - PlayStation 5 and PlayStation 4. Review Access - A review code was provided by the publisher for the purpose of this review.