Well well, color me surprised. Not even a year into the Switch 2’s life cycle, and we already have TWO racing games not featuring Italian plumbers, actually focused on driving real-life cars, increasing the size of your garage, and just taking advantage of the Switch 2’s portability to enjoy an occasional free race every now and then. GRID Legends was the first one to drop, and I’ll be honest, it set the bar incredibly high from the getgo. I was wondering how Gear.Club Unlimited 3 would fare in comparison, especially since its predecessor, released back in 2018, was mediocre at the very best. The results were pretty conclusive: it’s a good game. That’s it. Pros outweigh the cons, but it’s still flawed, and facing severe competition.

Gear.Club Unlimited 3 is good, but it’s yet another victim of Nintendo insisting that their systems don’t need analog triggers.

What we have here is a pseudo-simulator very similar in style to its predecessor: start off with a single car, win money by winning races, use the money to improve your garage and buy new cars, and use alternative currency icons, inherited from the franchise’s mobile origins (there are no microtransactions here, don’t you worry), to acquire new parts for your currently-owned cars. Nothing spectacular in terms of innovation, and the car roster isn’t immense (we’re capping at around 40-ish, as of the time of writing), but it’s completely decent for the time being. A few things differ Gear.Club Unlimited 3 from its predecessor, however: setting, visuals, and a handful of new gameplay features.

The setting is actually Japan, which immediately puts Gear.Club Unlimited 3 at risk of being directly compared to the upcoming Forza Horizon 6, also set in the same country. One comparison that won’t be fair or exciting at all, given how well we know that Playground Games has basically perfect racing games to a degree no other company has been able to do so. Still, this game features a somewhat decent assortment of environments to race on, from Tokyo’s iconic expressways to drift-oriented mountain passes. Nothing too visually exciting (well, Tokyo is, the rest isn’t), but still interesting overall.

Tokyo courses look great. Other courses… eh, not so much.

Graphics are, for the most part, decent, as previously mentioned. It’s not the best looking racing game on the Switch 2 (the fact I can already make a comparison is incredible in my opinion), but it’s fine enough. Car models look great, and every single course set in Tokyo looks pretty good. Any other course set elsewhere looks very dated. Also, make sure to play it in Performance mode, as the framerate is locked to a juicy 60fps.

Being a game set in Japan, you’d expect for Gear.Club Unlimited 3 to feature more than just your average circuit or sprint races. Thankfully, the folks at Eden Games did their homework, adding races set in drift-oriented levels, and also featuring duel races set in the same environments as Tokyo Xtreme Racer. In fact, these duels are almost identical to the ones seen in the classic games, as well as the brand new title in the franchise, released a few weeks back for Playstation 5. The difference being that a driver’s health isn’t depleted automatically and in real-time, instead being lost after a set amount of seconds, as if each section of the race was being counted as a chunk of the duel itself.

Talk about deja vu. I was playing the same damn thing on Tokyo Xtreme Racer a week ago.

That’s a nice addition to the formula, but it’s nowhere near as deep or engaging as the RPG-infused, free roaming system seen in Tokyo Xtreme Racer. You just have to partake in a duel and then you’re booted back to the main menu. Considering the loading times for Gear.Club Unlimited 3 are a bit longer than I hoped for, that doesn’t make these sessions as fast-paced or interesting as they could have been. It’s not bad, but it could have been a bit deeper. That can be said about the game as a whole, to be honest: it could have had just a bit more racing variety, a few more cars, a bit more depth here and there.

The game actually starts off in France, so there’s a bit of environmental variety at the end of the day.

But that doesn’t mean I didn’t have a good time with Gear.Club Unlimited 3. Considering how bad its predecessors were, this game is easily the best in the trilogy so far, and a clear indication Eden Games has taken fan feedback seriously. It is obviously hampered by the Switch 2’s lack of analog triggers (and it’s not Gamecube controller compatible), but its physics are decent, its responsiveness is good enough, and its framerate is excellent. It does everything it needs to do, it gets the job done in a decent enough state. Maybe it doesn’t feature the same amount of “bang for your buck” as GRID Legends, but I still think it’s worth your time, if you’re a fan of the genre.

Gear.Club Unlimited 3 is available now on Switch 2.

Reviewed on Switch 2.

A copy of Gear.Club Unlimited 3 was provided by the publisher.