Over the years, I’ve found that first impressions in gaming aren’t everything. This year, at least one game was held up as the pinnacle of putting 50 hours into it until it gets good, or else you don’t get it, and the sentiment rings even more true. Games are a slow burn of mechanics and difficulty that, if you aren’t grabbed right away, the moment you finally do, might be right around the corner. I so badly wanted Gear Club Unlimited 3 to be that game for me, especially when you look at how classic an arcade racer it feels like.
You start in a series of races, and you get two things thrown in your face that pull me in opposite directions. The first of these is the bombardment of information that hits you on the screen. The game has a point system for clean running, or avoiding walls, near misses, and all of this. They are just so poorly implemented, and it never gets much better. They flash on screen, mostly in the middle, telling you if you are doing well or good, but they don’t really matter.
The goal is to fill out an Unlimited score bar by the end of the race, which is more or less just a grade. You will learn to avoid collisions just because of how badly it punishes you, but filling this bar requires fairly clean racing at high speeds, which the game feels opposed to in the most frustrating ways. Your reward for doing so, though, is a gigantic ULTIMATE dancing in the middle of your screen as if to say, ‘Wow, you did amazing… WHY ARE YOU NOT CRASHING?’
Then on the polar spectrum, I actually loved the level design, and it feels so classic. Set tracks through the countryside or city with the brightest of greens for the rolling hills or the darkest of black for the buildings surrounded by the darkness of night. The whole affair brought me back to Ridge Racer? Which one? I do not know; maybe the PSP one that I was addicted to. The point is, this was a particular high point for me, and it genuinely made me smile as I sped through the locations on offer.
It only gets better too; there is a decent selection of tracks, and they aren’t just limited to Japan, where much of the narrative is set. Where the game really won some points with me was a particular track that had you literally driving at top speeds through heavy traffic on the Tokyo highway. Within the first few seconds of that track, you typically see yourself racing right past the Tokyo Tower, which looms overhead on the right side of the track, lit up in bright lights as if to beckon the player. Moments like that managed to break through.
The issue is, the tracks can be as inviting as you want them to be; it means nothing if the driving isn’t. While this is not the worst I have ever played, not by a stretch of the imagination, it isn’t particularly fun. I guess the best that could be said is that it isn’t broken; it is functioning. And for the most part, it does what you want it to. That doesn’t do much when you progress, only for the game to feel stiff. Like the car is navigating molasses. And while I didn’t try the entire roster of cars at my disposal, there were enough to continually get this feeling from D rank, where I would expect it, all the way through B. And it wears on you.
Then you get to the particular aspects of a driving game you desperately hope they get right. Slipstreaming, for instance, is very inconsistent and ranges from me dragging behind for a second. It ends up flying out to cut them off, all the way to me never gaining an inch on my opponent for several miles despite drafting off them. Then don’t even get me started on drifting, which involves literally fighting the controls to enter one, then being unable to maintain it—most frustratingly, losing ground because sliding straight into the wall with no momentum is an expectation. A tiny little tap on the handbrake can cause the car to do a complete 180 with minimal effort.
And when you collide in Gear Club Unlimited 3, you really collide. Hitting a wall can be challenging to straighten out properly, and the wall can almost latch onto your car, forcing you to straighten out. During one race, another car slammed me, wasn’t affected at all, sent me into the wall, and I had to drive along it for about a mile before I got free. Now that is severe, but every collision punishing in the most unfun way possible isn’t one of experience.
It’s equally disheartening because there is some care taken in crafting the multitude of real-world cars that appear in the game. I prefer playing my racing games in first person, which also showcases the details put to work on the inside of them. They are clearly a car team, and you can tell there is at least passion for what they are doing. I just wish that passion translated from the view behind the wheel to the feeling as well, and it rarely comes through.
There was always room for the game to win me over with the story mode. I was already getting this retro vibe from the whole affair, so even a classic Burnout, which was fairly limited, might be fun. The premise is that you are starting a Gear Club in Japan; those are two things I love: racing in Japan. You tackle different races, grow your prestige, and unlock events to take part in. Nope, not in the slightest. Now, to be fair, you do get some choice in races per each chapter, but it is optional races and one singular mission at a time to progress the story.
And the thing is, the pacing and balance are way off. At one point, after completing a racer or two, I was forced into several time trial missions in a row, like four or five. Note to developers everywhere, I love a good time trial to test my track knowledge, but that’s not the thing I was to be doing along the main path all the time. And the thing is, they eventually develop razor-thin margins that are preventing progress, and the game doesn’t have a difficulty option once you start, which is classic in a Sega GT ’02 way, but this is not a compliment.
Then there is this other type of game mode the developers seemed to have liked a lot, the dual, which comes across as an homage to Fast & The Furious: Tokyo Drift (which is even more painful given the state of drifting in the game), and it is the typical event you do on that Highway track I love so much. Through this event and another even less forgiving one, you will come to learn that the margin between a near miss and colliding with traffic that you definitely didn’t collide with is as thin as paper. Again, there are points where the game throws this even at you over and over again. Now, this is a race where you try to stay ahead of the opponent so they take damage, but at points you wonder when you will do some real racing again.
And all of this is set to this painfully repetitive soundtrack that feels like it wants to harken back to the classic Namco Sound Team, but it doesn’t do that for me at all. Instead, it feels like the same five synth notes played on a loop, and it does not get me ready to race. There are multiple songs in there too, something I only point out because I had to check, because I was so sure it was just the one, since they all blended.
Verdict
Somebody once told me that sometimes it makes you feel better if something is irredeemably bad, rather than frustratingly lacking, because with the first one you can just walk away and say yay, they did something bad. With games like Gear Club Unlimited 3, I see the ideas; they are there, bubbling right under the surface. As an arcade racer that feels like my childhood, you have NO FLIPPING IDEA how much I wanted to love this game, how much every good intention hurt when every poor design choice cropped up. This is what they meant when all you can do is dwell on what could have been, because clearly they have something in there.
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Reviewed on PlayStation 5, also available on Xbox Series X/S, Nintendo Switch 2, and PC via Steam and Epic Games Store
*A Code was provided by Nacon for the purposes of this review
Developer: Eden Games
Publisher: Nacon
Release Date: February 19, 2026 (Switch 2), October 8, 2026 (PS5, Xbox Series, and PC)
Pros
+Lovely track design across a multitude of gorgeous locations.
+Good selection of cars available with some quality detailing
Cons
-Poor story mode with one mission at a time that offers inconsistent pacing.
-Large amount of bugs and glitches from collision to car stuttering.
-Several Racing modes were just... Not fun...
-uninspired soundtrack.
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Gear Club Unlimited 3
