Staying in the moment is key to getting the most out of Ubisoft’s new action-sport open-world playground, Riders Republic. For around eight hours on both the Series X and the PS5, we have been doing the sickest flips on bikes, the wildest grinds on snowboards, and nailing the gnarliest gaps in a wingsuit. All of this, and more, in six American national parks all crammed together into one big map: Bryce Canyon, Canyonlands, Grand Teton, Mammoth Mountain, Sequoia Park, Yosemite Valley, and Zion. In the first few hours, I get the impression that when Riders Republic is flaunting this scale in your face with a snide grin and a few too many unengaging side-activities, it struggles to break the boundaries of the traditional Ubisoft-style gameplay loop. You go to a marker by mindlessly traversing a pretty environment, you do a thing at the marker, and then rinse and repeat. When you get to that point of interest and start a race, trick contest, or trial, though? Well, Riders Republic pulls together a really gratifying experience that has arcadey hooks and colourful looks. There is something special lying beneath the open-world malaise, make no bones about it, dude.Let’s start at the top of this mountain of a game, shall we? I played the full version of the game for four hours on Series X and another four on PS5 during the trial period, which was just the full game with a time limit. Servers opened for our review code on the day of release, so there was simply no way I was going to be able to get through the game in time for a review. That being said, I feel like I have a good feeling of what Riders Republic is and have plenty to say about it. Let’s start with the fact that Riders Republic is built for accessibility — something Tom mentioned in his preview of the game — much like many of its other recent titles like Far Cry 6 and Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla. Menus can be read out to you, control schemes are customisable, and there are UI and text options to make this as playable as possible for as many people as possible. It’s fantastic. Riders Republic ensures, though, that this accessibility extends to the way you play. After the opening levels teach you the basics of skiing the slopes — that Steep DNA is very present — rocketing through the air in a jetpack, and the big new addition of riding bikes very fast down dirt tracks in heavily forested areas, it becomes clear that you can make this adrenaline-junkie simulator as complex as you desire. There are three disciplines — biking, snow, and sky — with smaller subsects for race, tricks, or in the case of the air sports, you have Rocketwing (see: jetpack) and Wingsuit events. Theoretically, you can complete 60% of events just by twisting left or right through designated checkpoints in a variety of races. It does this basic A to B premise very well, too. You get a sense of speed, that you are doing something terrifying, and are in parity with the varied environments as dirt, snow, or arid turf rumbles under you. The tracks look great here, with narrow stretches of the checkpointed path taking you on frequently technical rides that often present at least one incredible vista of a national park. This all adds up to give you tunnel focus as you power down hills and over a mountain pass. It helps create tension in races by — and this is a bit of guesswork — using the physical ghosts of other players to populate the track with real looking names and riding styles. I was seeing mad attempts at overtakes on the narrow roads that resulted in rival racers catapulting off a ledge or into forestry in a way that was very reminiscent of real online player frustration. Likewise, this helps balance out higher difficulties, because you can watch the routes taken by other players without feeling like you are being rubber-banded. It’s really great stuff and creates great tension in some bigger race events. When biking or skiing, though, there are ramps off of big ledges that allow you to pull tricks. A combination of button presses, trigger pulls, and stick movements will allow you to rip some of the naughtiest moves seen since Keegan Palmer graced a skateboard at the Tokyo Olympics. It seems simple to grasp, but what starts as a little bunny hop into a flip to mix up a downhill race becomes much, much more over the course of the game. It’s addicting trying to get a higher score in each event by pulling off a specific trick. A 720-degree flat-spin Superman? No problem, dude. Fast forward ten minutes and there I am, still going for it. To help offset the potential fiddly nature of this, Ubisoft has added an auto-landing style. This removes the need to concentrate on actually controlling the way you move through the air, as the game will take care of it for you if you initiate the movement. That is perfect for kids, those who struggle with dexterity, or those who don’t care about score. The trade-off is less XP at the end of races and fewer points during stunt-based events that have multipliers for getting perfect manual landings. My word, do those manual landings add a bit of bone-breaking into the mix. This requires the player to control their airtime without help, resulting in a few head-to-stone incidents that make me glad that these ragdolls are sturdy. These underlying gameplay mechanics are solid and open up a great arcadey experience in the three disciplines. This relatively transferable skillset means that if you are a player who needs to tailor a videogame experience to your needs, you can do so in each discipline without it feeling like a lesser experience. These underlying complexities really help bring out the best in the two best sports disciplines: biking and snow sports. In both, you will compete in racing and some trick events. Every event grants you XP for better equipment — like bikes, boards, and skis — some “Bucks” for the customary cosmetics, and some stars. There is an eerily shallow gear system for each discipline. Each event on bike, snow, or air, unlocks different kit for you to use. I just don’t really see the point of the entire system since it doesn’t alter gameplay: the game just throws numbers at you and tells you a new set of skis is better than the other one without actually transposing that improvement into a change of gameplay. On the other hand, the star system is very simple, but effective. The more stars you get, the closer you come to an end of campaign “Big Event” based on real-life sponsors like Red Bull. I did one in the trial of the game on PS5, but when I converted my file to the full game I didn’t pop the achievement for it, so be wary of that if you also played the game early. Anyway, these stars are your progression marker. The more you get in each discipline, the more events you unlock in the world that branch out from just raw racing, to stunt contests, time trials, and more that I will get onto in a bit. Ultimately, it is a fancier version of the licence progression from Burnout Paradise. When one final boss or big event pops up, it’s showtime and you put your skill to the test. It’s simple but effective, and it’s great that you can add challenge to the game by earning extra stars by doing specific in-event tasks (like that 720 Superman I mentioned earlier, or finishing the event without braking). This adds a lot of replayability into the game instantly and ergonomically, and I can well imagine going back and playing for a few more stars. There are big multiplayer events that occur once an hour, as well. These are great too, with 50 players (20 on last-gen) barreling down a mountain in a carnage-filled trip with wild costumes and a mix of sports.So, while the snowsports and biking events are complex, fun, and moreish — I never want to see the Rocketwing flying events again. They are utterly heinous and boring, I hate them. The complexity of negotiating a set track disappears with the steady underlying controls, as a course is essentially just “fly here and then there” through nothing but air and a few billboards hanging from drones as obstacles. It is even outmatched by the wingsuiting events, of which I played very few. Even though wingsuiting still feels more on-rails than the other ground-based events, the discipline uses gravity to heighten a sense of speed when encountering obstacles. I have literally no idea why Rocketwinging is prioritised over wingsuiting given the gulf between the two in terms of quality. Especially when all the animations for the jetsuit look canned and the transition to parachuting is straight out of an original Xbox game. It feels out of place, undercooked, and like it should have been one side mission. The jetpack is the first indicator that there is a hint of shallowness to Riders Republic when you drift away from the ‘core’ events. One set of side missions is very good, that being the Trials-inspired Stunt courses. These fiendish little tracks are slower paced events in which you must negotiate obstacles, like narrow branches on a bike or ski-lift wires on a snowboard. Though the controls can go wonky at slower speeds, the use of a Forza-like rewind button helps rectify frustration without making everything too easy. Ultimately, it’s simple and technical — perfect. But then you get these weird “Funkies” events that put you on a pizza bike or an ice-cream cart that feel like a waste of time and aren’t funny enough to justify inclusion to me. Likewise, viewpoints are a cool idea, but ultimately you go to a location, get some information about a place in text, then move on to the next one. There are collectables, like Relic items like short skis and there are balloons to grab from odd places, but I don’t really know what these add to the game other than an excuse to ‘explore.’ But truth be told, this isn’t exploration. It is an exercise in the game handholding you through the world by pointing your focus in a direction and asking you to blindly wander there. You don’t really engage with the world in any meaningful way. In fact, outside of the events, the world sometimes feels underpopulated and looks stretched and lifeless. These side activities could literally be placed in a menu as a list, which would at least save yourself the travel time. This is all to say, nothing is strictly bad, but it is frustratingly mundane, with a lack of interactivity or organic gameplay, and highlights how the open-world environment is essentially a pretty menu. Even just stripping out the markers in the menu might help traversal feel a bit more organic. Perhaps, by creating smaller dedicated exploration zones for you to do the side activities in, some of the in-game voice talents could talk about the history of the environment you are in. This might help create a bit more intrigue than is currently offered in a wide-open space with markers plastered everywhere, but nothing to do except head to one. Again, during the events, this world can be a fab playground that feels tailored to the sport you are playing. Even outside of the events, there is a whole thin narrative about a free republic that is just about wild athletic folk just being free to be wild athletic folk, or something. It actually kind of works. It’s a slab of the bluest cheese, don’t get me wrong, but it is kind of charming nonetheless. I was expecting to be irritated by a false Hollywoodised version of outdoorsy extreme sports types — and it kind of is — because myself, my home, my local people, and environment are exactly the kind of wild outdoorsy people who like jumping off cliffs, riding bikes in forests, and saying dude to fill the space between other words. But Riders made me laugh quite a few times when I heard them using the native language and lingo of the wild outdoorsy folk quite well. Even though I don’t really like the way you interact with the world, it is very cool to see all those American Parks crammed together. It made me think of the Assassin’s Creed Discovery Tours that Ubisoft has been making for fun historical education. I think that this is the perfect kind of game to hand over to your young one to explore a bit and it might entice them into the outdoors. Indeed, I felt the pull to head out and go wild swimming and biking, or anything else I could get my white knuckles on. I ran into some very rough performance issues, however. When I played on PS5, I had one hard crash. On Series X I had three hard crashes in three hours, and one soft crash that totally messed up the Xbox, booted it to home, and then restarted the game. I have no idea what caused it: no error codes, nothing. I hold out hope that this is only an issue for me because it hasn’t been listed in our review guide copy of known issues: but frankly, one crash every hour is unacceptable even by my lax standards. Hopefully, this gets resolved, but if you are planning to get this early and issues like this would ruin it for you, I would recommend holding out until you can see if others are having the same technical experience. I also don’t know what is going on with the unlocking of achievements. I think my time with the trial has messed a few of them up. I unlocked a few after doing certain events that I had already completed the conditions for in the trial, but there are one or two I feel like I should have unlocked by now for completing events. The list itself is a basic batch of “try everything.” There are some great creative ones for doing specific tricks, and some that require you to complete certain end-game events. I’m not seeing any for getting every single collectable, just a majority, thank the extreme sports gods. My first impression of Riders Republic for around eight hours is generally very good, then. At its core, the biking and snow sports action is just so much fun. It keeps you on your toes by having you speeding down mountains and pulling tricks from magnificent heights. That feeling of being hyper-aware of the varied environments while you negotiate a tricky course or speed past other riders in a race is one of the most satisfying experiences I have had this year. I could spend hours more just completing all of the challenges and getting closer towards unlocking the boss battles, and I am looking forward to doing so! Outside of that core offering, though, it appears the game is struggling to land all of its tricks. Shallowness is an unfortunate keyword to start thinking about from my opening hours, but I can’t escape it. The gear system didn’t really offer anything meaningful and the Rocketwing sport is just not engaging in any way. Nor does Riders Republic always manage to untangle itself from a web of useless clutter or an unsatisfying map design. While the environments do look great, they never did more for me than be a treadmill to traverse to get to another pulsing triangle marker on the map. For some, I suspect that that will be a totally fine way to experience the world. It just left me a little cold and unengaged. I really hope I don’t sound too negative here, but Riders Republic flaunts this shallow scale to you constantly so it is hard to ignore. Getting away from that bravado, though, is a totally rad thrill ride that can be experienced by everyone, and I really hope people do give it the chance it deserves!
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