Riders Republic – -apkrig
Although Riders Republic does not refer to Steep at all, it is really a full-fledged sequel. Once again, a respectably huge map opens up in front of you with snow-capped peaks and warm valleys, where you can once again go skiing, snowboarding, wear a wingsuit and enjoy paragliding.
But what was in the case of Steep the complete content of the game is only a fraction of it. Riders Republic is expanding the mentioned “means of transport” with bicycles, jet-powered wings, a snowmobile and many variants of the same, the purpose of which is to purely entertain the player and spectators.
The presence of carts capable of overcoming a vast landscape not covered with snow means that the descent from the top of the mountain does not end there. You can pause the game with a single button and select in which mode you want to continue in the circular menu. In a second, your snowboard turns into a mountain bike, so you can start without losing speed.
This element makes the Riders Republik feel much more complete and full of emotion. You no longer have to rely on constant teleportation to the tops to get to the fun adrenaline rides. This time you can go on them yourself with the help of a snowmobile (it also goes by bike, if you find a good way, but expect a longer hike).
With bicycles and scooters, a new element comes into play, namely the real discovery of the American Yosemite National Park. In other words, you are not only dependent on partial races and downhill runs, but you are only free to discover the landscape and its delicious scenes.
The map will not overwhelm you with a clutter of icons, but question marks can be found here. And if you take the job and get to them exactly a meter, you can, for example, play a short cutscene depicting one of the largest redwoods in the world, while you also get a brief factual description of the actual phenomenon you are watching.
And it works. I was happy to look for places in the past closed beta to discover the beauties of American nature, learn something and have fun on the way to them with a free ride. The other content of the game is the races themselves and various challenges in which you try to finish in the first place, show the bravest tricks or just go down a very difficult terrain.
Most disciplines are marked by dizzying speed capable of inducing very adrenaline experiences. Whether you are racing on skis, bicycles or with rocket wings, you will run hundreds of kilometers an hour from steep slopes and hope that you will somehow get through the approaching forest.
Each individual device is well controlled (the longest I’ve gotten used to powered wings) and can entertain in its own unique way. But not everything is always pink. One of the main attractions of Riders Republic is the massive races of 64 players, and when such a large number of bodies try to fit into the narrow goal of the checkpoint at a dizzying speed from the slope, it easily happens that you miss the point of a few centimeters.
In this case, you will have to return the time known from racing games and a second attempt to catch the goal. Maybe you will succeed, maybe you will smear on the stick, which in the worst case, not collecting the checkpoint means another journey through time, in a better position to get to your feet and continue the race.
These massive races have everything in them. The start of 64 skiers is impressive and funny in the first turn, at a more demanding, strict checkpoint the race starts to frustrate, only to amaze you by automatically exchanging skis for a bike in one third of the ride and after the next third the wing appears on your back instead of a bike and you are already flying through one levitating hoop after another.
Making a mistake in such a race, often not by your own fault, but means almost a certain loss of any interesting placement, and making a mistake twice then means that you will not even have time to finish the race. As soon as the first competitor crosses the finish line, a gallows countdown starts for everyone else.
I can’t say that I wouldn’t enjoy these races at all, just as I can’t say that I really enjoyed them. In the end, the rewards are asterisks, which unlock a certain amount of additional content for you, so even placing in the other half is not downset. There is also a game and premium currency, with the help of which you buy cosmetic accessories.
No, Riders Republic is definitely not a game for me for the most part. From the part that plays with colors, in which all the characters of the local “story” behave terribly cool and because of which a giraffe in a suit can run around on the ice cream parlor. Probably a grateful thing for streamers, but for players who simply want to experience adrenaline racing, it’s an unnecessarily disruptive element.
With the exception of massive races, the result doesn’t matter if you play alone or with other players. The world is full of other racers (now that the closed and open beta is free, but what will it look like after the release?) And their presence prevents the feeling that you would be alone on a huge map. It gives the environment life, population and it seemed very nice to me.
Even though I was just driving through the countryside outside the race, doing t-shirts among the fallen trees for pleasure, five other players suddenly rode beside me, and without any agreement, we looked like a bunch of friends going down a hill, enjoying vacation and life, and then we each went our separate ways.
Finally, I will mention one famous achievement that they really pulled out of in Ubisoft – there is no loading. Teleportation around the world is completely instantaneous, as is changing the means of transport in flight. Thanks to that, you are constantly playing, you are not waiting for anything and you are simply not dictated by the system: “Well, now you have a few seconds to rest while looking at the static screen with tips.”
I spent a lot of pleasant moments in the Riders Republic beta, which was disturbed here and there by the frustration caused by the chaotic massive multiplayer and the rigor of the checkpoint system. However, despite the undeniable fun in the first hours, I have to express my concerns about the full game.
Although the number of disciplines has increased considerably compared to Steep, and both skis and bikes can be powered by jets after the example of wings, which is a slightly different experience, over time it can get tired of going down the peaks and looking for interesting places with instructive labels. And as soon as the map is not crowded with icons representing real players in the game, which were really blessed in the beta, the local peaks, valleys and rivers become orphaned and the previously living environment becomes a dead wasteland.
That is why it should be a free-to-play game, because then there would be no shortage of filling her world and there would be no fear that the massive races would one day die completely. While playing, I had a huge desire to continue in Riders Republic, but I’m not at all tempted to give 18 hundreds for such a game, so that in a few months I would be completely alone in it.
But even if Ubisoft does not later decide to switch to the free-to-play model, write to yourself that as soon as the game is in a significant discount for a few hundred, which is really not unusual for games from this publisher, it will immediately appear in my bookcase.
