{"id":67991,"date":"2018-12-10T11:30:00","date_gmt":"2018-12-10T11:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nintendolife.com\/reviews\/nintendo-switch\/gear_club_unlimited_2"},"modified":"2018-12-10T11:30:00","modified_gmt":"2018-12-10T11:30:00","slug":"review-gear-club-unlimited-2-sluggish-controls-force-this-real-world-racer-off-the-track","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/2018\/12\/10\/review-gear-club-unlimited-2-sluggish-controls-force-this-real-world-racer-off-the-track\/","title":{"rendered":"Review: Gear.Club Unlimited 2 &#8211; Sluggish Controls Force This Real-World Racer Off The Track"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"media_block\"><a href=\"http:\/\/images.nintendolife.com\/reviews\/nintendo-switch\/gear_club_unlimited_2\/large.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/images.nintendolife.com\/reviews\/nintendo-switch\/gear_club_unlimited_2\/small.jpg\" class=\"media_thumbnail\"><\/a><\/div>\n<div id=\"\">\n<aside class=\"picture embed\"><a title=\"Gear.Club Unlimited 2 Review - Screenshot 1 of 5\" href=\"http:\/\/images.nintendolife.com\/screenshots\/94123\/large.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/images.nintendolife.com\/screenshots\/94123\/900x.jpg\" alt=\"Gear.Club Unlimited 2 Review - Screenshot 1 of 5\" \/><\/a><\/aside>\n<p>Last year\u2019s <strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nintendolife.com\/games\/nintendo-switch\/gear_club_unlimited\">Gear.Club Unlimited<\/a><\/strong> was a decent attempt at bringing a \u2018serious\u2019 racing game to the Switch. Based on a mobile game, the \u2018Unlimited\u2019 part of the title referred to the scrapping of microtransactions and all the other nonsense you got when playing it on your phone. Although Gear.Club Unlimited was a good start, it had a number of issues we hoped would be fixed should a sequel ever come. One year later, that sequel is indeed with us, but so too are the same problems. There are even more this time, in fact.<\/p>\n<p>Let\u2019s start with the positives: <strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nintendolife.com\/games\/nintendo-switch\/gear_club_unlimited_2\">Gear.Club Unlimited 2<\/a><\/strong> has a hefty career mode complete with its own storyline. As a test driver for a racing manufacturer, you\u2019re thrown in at the last minute to replace one of the main racers, who has had to leave thanks to a massive drugs scandal. Okay, the drugs bit is a lie \u2013 it\u2019s not <em>actually<\/em> explained why he left \u2013 but regardless, now you\u2019re in. Naturally, it quickly becomes clear that you\u2019ve got mad skillz\u2122 required and thus begins your glittering motorsport career.<\/p>\n<aside class=\"picture embed\"><a title=\"Gear.Club Unlimited 2 Review - Screenshot 2 of 5\" href=\"http:\/\/images.nintendolife.com\/screenshots\/94124\/large.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/images.nintendolife.com\/screenshots\/94124\/900x.jpg\" alt=\"Gear.Club Unlimited 2 Review - Screenshot 2 of 5\" \/><\/a><\/aside>\n<p>With around 250 races to take on and more than 50 officially-licensed cars to buy and upgrade (ranging from the humble Mini John Cooper Works you begin with all the way up to the likes of the Bugatti Veyron Grand Sport and the Porsche 918 Spyder), it\u2019s fair to say there\u2019s a <em>heck<\/em> of a lot to do here: it\u2019s going to take many, many hours before you clear career mode 100%.<\/p>\n<p>The problem is, you\u2019re unlikely to ever want to make it that far, because everything about Gear.Club Unlimited 2 \u2013 a game that revolves around the concept of speed, dynamism and general nippiness, remember \u2013 feels like such a slow, cumbersome slog, to the extent that even making your way through the menus can feel like a struggle at times.<\/p>\n<p>One of the main reasons for this is the inexplicable input lag that\u2019s present from the moment you boot the game up to the moment you quit to the Switch menu and load up <strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nintendolife.com\/games\/nintendo-switch\/super_smash_bros_ultimate\">Smash Bros<\/a><\/strong> to make sure there isn\u2019t a problem with the settings on your TV (there isn\u2019t). Whether you\u2019re playing on your TV with the Joy-Con or the Pro Controller \u2013 or even playing in handheld mode \u2013 there\u2019s a very noticeable and visible delay between you pressing a button (or moving the stick) and the resulting action happening on-screen.<\/p>\n<aside class=\"picture embed\"><a title=\"Gear.Club Unlimited 2 Review - Screenshot 3 of 5\" href=\"http:\/\/images.nintendolife.com\/screenshots\/94128\/large.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/images.nintendolife.com\/screenshots\/94128\/900x.jpg\" alt=\"Gear.Club Unlimited 2 Review - Screenshot 3 of 5\" \/><\/a><\/aside>\n<p>In menus it\u2019s irritating; you constantly feel like you\u2019re wrestling with the game\u2019s UI. The lag makes the cursor feel extremely sluggish and heavy, as if you\u2019re dragging it around the screen against its will. In most games this would be a minor quibble, but Gear.Club Unlimited 2 has you spending more time in its menus than many other racing games (which we\u2019ll get to in a bit), so it\u2019s all the more frustrating here.<\/p>\n<p>If this lag makes the menus annoying, it can make the racing downright <em>infuriating<\/em>. For the first couple of hours you\u2019ll often struggle to take basic turns because there\u2019s a hefty delay between you moving the stick and the car starting to turn. Sharp turns are particularly annoying because you\u2019ll likely enter and leave them late then take ages to correct your car on the straights, occasionally leaving you skidding left and right similar to when you let a non-gamer try a racing game for the first time.<\/p>\n<p>Eventually, your brain will adapt and you\u2019ll learn to take the lag into account when turning, but every time you step up a class and get a more powerful car there\u2019s another period of adjustment because the faster you approach a corner the more extreme the delay feels. While it\u2019s possible to get used to it, then, it never really gets to a stage where the handling is comfortable or satisfying in any way \u2013 and that&#8217;s a <em>major<\/em> problem with a title in this particular genre.<\/p>\n<aside class=\"picture embed\"><a title=\"Gear.Club Unlimited 2 Review - Screenshot 4 of 5\" href=\"http:\/\/images.nintendolife.com\/screenshots\/94122\/large.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/images.nintendolife.com\/screenshots\/94122\/900x.jpg\" alt=\"Gear.Club Unlimited 2 Review - Screenshot 4 of 5\" \/><\/a><\/aside>\n<p>This is combined with some really noticeable frame pacing issues. While the game aims for a steady 30 frames per second, the action gets really choppy at times \u2013 especially when playing in handheld mode. This sort of thing can be a major distraction in racing games, and that\u2019s the case here: as scenery stutters past you while you struggle to time a laggy corner right, there can be a real feeling of \u201cWhat\u2019s actually going on here?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Other than the racing, the rest of career mode is often a needlessly convoluted experience, too. The game has failed to ditch the much-criticised garage system from the previous game, meaning its mobile roots continue to hang around like a bad smell. Rather than a simple menu where you can buy and install upgrades on your car, you have to buy and place various workshops in your garage \u2013 one for tyres, one for customisation, one for mechanical work, one for rally parts and so on \u2013 and use the cursor to slowly lift and drag your car to each of them at a time.<\/p>\n<p>This is clearly a leftover from the mobile days where you\u2019d use your finger to drag your car around, but given how sluggish the menu feels at the best of times here, the ultimate result is that upgrading your car feels like an absolute chore, rather than the reward it <em>should<\/em> be for all your hard work on the track.<\/p>\n<aside class=\"picture embed\"><a title=\"Gear.Club Unlimited 2 Review - Screenshot 5 of 5\" href=\"http:\/\/images.nintendolife.com\/screenshots\/94127\/large.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/images.nintendolife.com\/screenshots\/94127\/900x.jpg\" alt=\"Gear.Club Unlimited 2 Review - Screenshot 5 of 5\" \/><\/a><\/aside>\n<p>We <em>really<\/em> wanted to love Gear.Club Unlimited 2. The Switch may be spoilt for choice when it comes to the vast majority of gaming genres, but realistic racing isn\u2019t one of them and this could have been the solution. Instead, it\u2019s an infuriatingly laggy affair that, coupled with its horrible loading times \u2013 regularly reaching upwards of a minute and often stuck on \u201895%\u2019 for half of that \u2013 feels like a game that is constantly struggling to run from the title screen onward.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div id=\"conclusion\">\n<h2 class=\"heading\">Conclusion<\/h2>\n<p>Rather than building on the solid foundations its predecessor set last year, Gear.Club Unlimited 2 slams into reverse gear and delivers racing gameplay that feels significantly more laggy and sluggish than the original. With no attempt made to cut its remaining mobile roots and more performance issues than a drunken West End actor, we just can\u2019t recommend dropping a whopping \u00a354.99\/$59.99 on this unoptimised, clunky effort.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Last year\u2019s Gear.Club Unlimited was a decent attempt at bringing a \u2018serious\u2019 racing game to the Switch. Based on a mobile game, the \u2018Unlimited\u2019 part of the title referred to the scrapping of microtransactions and all the other nonsense you got when playing it on your phone. Although Gear.Club Unlimited was a good start, it [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-67991","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-nintendo-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67991","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=67991"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67991\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=67991"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=67991"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=67991"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}