Instead there?s a mixture of holding down the E-brake, labeled as an actual Drift button on the control layout, and applying brakes, then switching to gas at the apex of your drift. It?s also pretty satisfying when you start to understand the drift system a little better, which isn?t quite a simple matter of applying the E-brake quickly and gunning the gas. But, over time, you learn to adjust and it starts to feel natural. The cars all feel a bit heavy, which is nice when it comes to slamming through Police Stations and other drivers, but less so when you?re trying to fine tune your drift angle in the middle of a sharp curve.

There?s a good chance you won?t auto-win your first race, second, or even third. Seriously, I?ve not played a racer this punishing since first laying my hands on the PS1 era Gran Turismo titles, which is saying something for an arcade style racer like Unbounded. So much so that the game is actually difficult to play and wrap your head around at first, almost to an extreme. There?s definitely a similar feel in tone to more modern titles like Split/Second, or the more popular Burnout series, but the car handling and physics feel wholly unique. Boosting has two purposes, not the least of which includes causing destructive havoc on the track, either by forcing other racers to crash or using it to burst through destructible objects and buildings to create shortcuts. Unbounded still has a heavy emphasis on drifting, which serves as the primary way of building up your in-game boost called Power. A lot of that comes from the fact that it?s not developed out of Japan, instead being developed by the fine folks over at Bugbear Entertainment, who were behind the vastly underrated FlatOut titles.

I guess since Namco owns the license, and people are familiar with the name, it made sense to use it, but Unbounded handles a lot of things differently, drifting included, than previous RR titles.

Calling Ridge Racer: Unbounded an actual Ridge Racer game is a bit of a stretch.

Ridge racer unbounded drifting