Usually, the optimum racing line in a driving game isn't the one that goes through the big concrete column.
In Unbounded, the surest way to top up your boost-powering nitrous meter - aside from smashing into other drivers - is to tear up the track itself: carving up concrete, flinging yourself through walls, annihilating any bollards standing in your way. It's physical, jolting, and thrilling. And after years of carefully avoiding collisions in racing games, it's freeing too.
There's more to Unbounded than simply tearing tracks to pieces though - you can also make them, in one of the most accessible level editors we've ever seen. It's racing Lego, essentially, allowing you to slap together pre-made bits of track to make your own courses.
It takes us a mere two minutes to make our very own course - a series of wicked turns through construction sites and past the occasional Chinese restaurant. In fact, making a level almost seems too simple, which is why the finished game will offer an advanced editor for the kind of obsessive tinkerer who likes to make fully functioning bread slicers in LittleBigPlanet.
But the simplicity of the basic editor does mean that Unbounded's servers will swiftly fill with up with amateur cities to tear through. And considering the fresh, destructive approach to racing Bugbear's bringing to Ridge Racer, we may well need all the tracks we can find. craig owens
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Comments
5 comments so far...
BoringName on 4 Feb '12 said:
Finally! Someone has taken the time to appriciate my bread slicer.
zinaptik on 4 Feb '12 said:
seeing as flatout 3 is burning in hell, I'm looking forward to bugbears return it might say ridge racer but this looks and sounds like the flatout 3 I waited ages for
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corkscru74 on 4 Feb '12 said:
About bloody time! I remember days gone by when games came with level editors almost as a given.
4D Drive (anyone else remember it?) was a cracking 3D racer on PC where you could build your own levels with ease...and loop-the-loops! And it wasn't just PC games, Micro Machines on the Mega Drive came with a track editor and is still an amazing multiplayer game to this day.
And anything is going to be better than the Gran Turismo "Track Editor" - what a bunch of hooey!
KK-Headcharge78 on 4 Feb '12 said:
Track editor sounds brilliant, long overdue in a racer. However I personally feel the racing itself looks like a sub-par Burnout rip off with yawn written all over it.
Jimmy Luxury on 5 Feb '12 said:
I remember it! Great little driving game. I even remember the names of the computer characters. Skid Vicious and Cherry Chassis I seem to remember. Used to spend hours building courses in that game. Good times...