I’ve never hated a game I really enjoy, but somehow Riders Republic managed to do it. Ubisoft’s open world action sports game begins with a promising premise: you, a voiceless action sports lover, will arrive at Riders Ridge, a mecca for shredders everywhere. Somehow, contrary to all national park laws and state regulations, national parks – including Mammoth and Yosemite – have been repossessed by the action sports industry for the express purpose of screwing your ass.
The Rider’s Republic map looks about as great as any other Ubisoft open world – that is, it’s visually pleasing to the eye, but without much meaningful or interesting depth. Huge mountains and deep valleys consume the map and give the whole game a great sense of different verticality. Multiple biomes – forest, desert, snow, etc. – make for a good visual variety as you flip back and forth between destinations.
And you go back and forth a lot. While Rider’s Republic has a number of collectibles on its map – like spotting landmarks or popping balloons (… for some reason?) – the world isn’t that exciting. I rarely felt the need to go off the beaten path because my curiosity was never rewarded with anything other than mean collectibles – ways to tick off endless boxes on various checklists. After a while, I got bored of going from place to place and started traveling fast to save time. The Riders Republic map is really big so it can take over 10 minutes to go from one end to the other for a race. Since this trip is always boring, I thought it best to skip it. This beautiful world was just a dressing room and not something I wanted to deal with.
Whether I was in the time trial or in the 64-person mass races, racing at breakneck speed along the numerous streets and paths of the open world, sometimes down a 90-degree incline, captures a sense of speed that few games have to have. Every time I drove through a race I felt like I was barely in control, that one wrong move was going to bring me to ruin, and it was exciting. This was especially true of wingsuit and rocketsuit races, where you navigate through the air trying to pass checkpoints. During these intense races you will fly up and down at very different altitudes, resulting in constant near-misses and collisions with the ground and mountains around you. I loved taking on the races in the game and testing my skills while Riders Republic slowly increased the challenge. First place always felt great.
I also enjoyed the races that mix the different action sports of Riders Republic together. Many long races force you to switch between your bikes, snowboards, wingsuits and rocketsuits, test your skills and punish any mistake. As I got better at the game, these races have improved my understanding of driver mechanics in an always satisfactory way. I always took the opportunity to compete in a new multisport race when it was unlocked.
Trick challenge races, where you try to earn points by performing aerial maneuvers, aren’t nearly as exciting. Performing these tricks doesn’t feel rewarding and you have no incentive to master complex maneuvers because you can just do the same basic tricks over and over. I’ve fought my way through these races many times so I rarely knew what trick I would perform when going up a ramp. Trick challenge races were unable to test my knowledge or skills with the trick systems, which resulted in me largely ignoring the system. Especially given the number of these different trick races there are in Riders Republic – dozens or more for each sport – this eventually became a repetitive slog when I phased out the more standard racing events.
After almost every race you will receive a new motorcycle or vehicle. With this constant flow of new equipment, I’ve never been tied to a single device. So I wasn’t forced to search my equipment. I just picked the one with the largest number and went about my day. Those are minor complaints by and large, but in a game while Riders Republic is around, those minor issues have gotten me bored.
The biggest problem with Riders Republic is as it reveals all that is good about gameplay with uninterrupted abomination. This game is desperate to make you think it’s cool. At any time, it bombarded you with its endlessly long script, which is full of incredibly annoying characters and produces an endless amount of irritating jokes and one-liners. Some outstanding highlights are: “You work like a pork rib on these events! Nummies ”and you run into“ a whole new level of Steeze ”that is repeated over and over again in unmistakable prompts that are played every time you press a. scroll certain part of the game map or traverse the world. These lines aren’t cool the first time; they are unbearably unbearable after a dozen times.
The soundtrack has the same problem, which incredibly includes a cover of Coolio’s song “Gangsta’s Paradise”, sung softly by Les Ukulélés Girls, with artist Zita. It really is one of the worst songs I’ve ever heard. Scatter select tracks from Green Day’s newest album, “Black and Yellow” by Wiz Khalifa, and you have a soundtrack that is completely separate from popular music. The soundtrack is such a sticking point for me because Riders shoves it down your throat. There is an in-game radio with different genres and stations, but once you get into the race the game has a preset soundtrack. Play a dozen races and there’s a really good chance you’ll listen to the same three songs a dozen times.
Rider’s Republic offers an experience that, while fun and exhilarating, gets under your skin in a way that no other game has. It does a thing or two that I think are great, but that doesn’t outweigh the things I can’t stand. In the end, Riders Republic dies from a million cuts. I can only hear the same song or dialogue so many times that it stops being annoying and gets angry. Riders Republic is a missed opportunity in a unique and fun action sports game – a genre I grew up with and sorely miss. It’s a game I won’t be returning to any time soon.
