Let’s get it out of the way: Riders Republic is fun. It’s a lot of fun, in fact. Bombing downhill on a snowboard at high speed, launching off a ramp and switching to a wingsuit or jetpack to take to the skies, before nosediving into a tree just to scare the crap out of another player simply going about their day is incredibly enjoyable. I’ve only spent a few hours with the game so far, but there’s so much to play with here that it’s easy to see myself spending plenty more hours in the future.
Ubisoft’s downhill sandbox/playground is brimming with possibilities and events to enjoy, with skiing, snowboarding, mountain biking, wingsuits, jetpacks, snowmobiles and more all available for playing to dick about with. The toys you can play with are so much fun, and a lot of the events themselves are designed to maximise the amount of fun you’re having, switching between disciplines like the Transform Races in GTA Online.
So why is Riders Republic so easy to dislike?
Simple: it’s wrapped up in so much fake, cringey crap. It’s easy to dismiss the idea of a game like Riders Republic having some kind of story or premise as silly, and given how a lot of the characters talk during cutscenes, Ubisoft have done a fantastic job of making every bit of dialogue as skippable as possible. Forgot “bro, you just posted cringe,” this is just embarrassing for everyone involved.
Riders Republic wants to justify its sandbox by offering a kind of loose premise for its antics. Essentially, some hipster millennial/Gen Z tosspots decided to (in my mind) secede from the United States to form their own nation, one that lets them “totally shred” and be “wicked gnarly” or something. That’s fine and all, but everyone who has any line of dialogue just appears to be some weapons-grade loser who signs off phone calls by saying “CIAO FOR NOW” in the most obnoxious way possible.
The soundtrack doesn’t help either, though it does earn some brownie points for having The Offspring’s All I Want on there, fulfilling a Crazy Taxi shaped hole in my life that Taxi Chaos failed to fill earlier this year. Of course, all that goodwill was undone by a folk cover version of Gangsta’s Paradise that just doesn’t hit the mark — nothing says exciting like taking a classic rap song and making it super depressing. They may as well have added Piano Man and Johnny Cash’s cover of Hurt to complete the sad boy mixtape.
It feels kind of petty to be so hung up on the audio/visual presentation of a game that lets you slam headfirst into a tree like an uncool George of the Jungle, but it’s just so awful. It feels like the product of a bunch of out-of-touch middle aged writers trying to emulate what the gamers will find cool, but it just comes on too strong. After about half an hour, the only course of action is to mute all the voices and music, and just stick your own music on.
Perhaps this a natural pitfall for racing games designed to represent a community of people swarming to a general location, as Forza Horizon follows a similar premise. Don’t get me wrong, the characters in FH aren’t really a step up from the idiots shown in Riders Republic, but Forza Horizon’s biggest fault is that the characters are just there. They’re bland mouthpieces who blend into the background, instead of overpowering digital douchebags who diminish every moment they’re on screen.
While the only similarity in terms of gameplay they might share is that fact sometimes you might grind on a rail here and there, Riders Republic feels like today’s equivalent of Sunset Overdrive, at least for me anyway. Again, both titles offer gameplay that’s incredibly fun, but sticking around long enough will make you want to reach for that mute button on the TV remote. At least Sunset Overdrive had a couple of decent jokes going for it. Also, reset the clock, it’s been zero days since a Sunset Overdrive reference.
I do want to stress that, from what I’ve played of the rest of the game, there’s a tonne of fun to be had with Riders Republic’s various disciplines. The graphics are also astonishing, and the wingsuit/jetpack hybrid makes exploration feel more liberating than in other open world games. It just sucks that the entire presentation of the game makes me want to jam needles into my eardrums. There’s a case to be made that Riders Republic needed to be as bombastic as the gameplay it offers, but I think the gameplay should have spoken for itself, instead of being drowned out by such inane, unlikeable rubbish.
Then again, that’s basically been Ubisoft’s lot for the past few games. Watch Dogs 2 and Legion tried ever so desperately to be down with the kids, while titles like Roller Champions and Hyper Scape, along with the upcoming XDefiant and Ghost Recon: Frontline, showed Ubisoft’s blatant desire to either chase a trend or try to be cool. If nothing else, Riders Republic is more evidence that this cool crusade is not working out.
READ MORE: Demon Turf (Xbox Series X) REVIEW – Turf Takeover
Some of the coverage you find on Cultured Vultures contains affiliate links, which provide us with small commissions based on purchases made from visiting our site. We cover gaming news, movie reviews, wrestling and much more.
