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GEAR.CLUB UNLIMITED
review | SWITCH
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Publisher: Microids.
Developer: Eden Games. Released: December 2017 (Europe). Genre: Racing. Posted 30th December 2025. By Tom Clare © 2025 |
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Gear.Club Unlimited offered a fascinating glimpse into the evolving nature of the racing genre when it released in late 2017. A spiritual successor to Eden Games’ Test Drive Unlimited, this Switch racer had its roots in mobile gaming, and it showcases a myriad of positives and drawbacks to this development path. Whilst lightweight by the standards of the best in show, there is an immediacy and quality to GCU that suits the system’s portable aspect.
Whilst Test Drive Unlimited saw players cruising around an expansive open world seeking out events, GCU is a far more compact experience, featuring short, speedy courses that typically last around one minute, and hundreds of races sequenced within tournaments. No tally is taken, however, with each event acting as a distinct single race. Winning races unlocks more tournaments and grants the player money to spend on luxury vehicles, as well as building and upgrading the garage space.
Adapting their mobile game, Eden Studios have crafted a fun, accessible Switch racer, albeit one with a few technical and design issues
Would this simcade approach offer the Switch a credible equivalent to Forza Horizon or DriveClub of competing systems? Well, in its own way, yes. There’s unquestionably less depth, but the handling is decent, the cars vary considerably in their driving characteristics, and a good suite of adjustable accessibility options allow players to craft an experience that caters for everything between a simple, breezy arcade approach, to one that requires careful handling, braking and managing of slides. The breadth of play options is especially handy for local multiplayer. This is one area Gear.Club wins out over its PlayStation 4 and Xbox One contemporaries: the ability to play up to four-player split-screen. Whilst the local multiplayer lacks the visual pyrotechnics and big fields of AI competitors that elevate the likes of Mario Kart 8 or Fast RMX, it’s nice that Eden recognised the potential for party play on the Switch. Racing with three pals is good fun, and there’s no shortage of courses to try.
Gear.Club looks good, too, with the vehicles in particular exhibiting strong levels of detail, as well as impressive reflections and lighting effects. It’s at its best when you’re cruising around picturesque coastal locations, enjoying dashes through the mountains and open countryside, or blasting along desert highways with the sun in your eyes, evocative of the Need for Speed series. Roundabouts and little quirks, such as villages built into the rock faces, add a little personality, though some of the themes are quite disparate, with the game’s locations coming to represent an odd patchwork.
Gear.Club looks good, too, with the vehicles in particular exhibiting strong levels of detail, as well as impressive reflections and lighting effects. It’s at its best when you’re cruising around picturesque coastal locations, enjoying dashes through the mountains and open countryside, or blasting along desert highways with the sun in your eyes, evocative of the Need for Speed series. Roundabouts and little quirks, such as villages built into the rock faces, add a little personality, though some of the themes are quite disparate, with the game’s locations coming to represent an odd patchwork.
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Gear.Club Unlimited labours at times. The racing is fairly rapid, achieving a decent rate of knots in the higher speed classes and resulting in some genuinely pulsating highway dashes. However, you’ll also encounter a catalogue of performance issues that see it lagging behind its rivals. Sometimes, it’s hitches in the frame rate, or brief freezes in the action, which at speed, are particularly distracting. I encountered the game crashing on numerous occasions, as well as hanging on loading screens. The garage is poorly optimised for Switch, as the game struggles under huge amounts of slowdown and glacial response times. To cap it off, the pithy races are punctuated by surprisingly lengthy loading times.
There’s also the broader issue of the game’s mobile development origins. The Switch version spares players from being swindled through transactional content, and with dozens of routes and hundreds of races, there’s no shortage of action to keep players occupied. However, without a meaningful framework, races feel curiously insignificant, like you’re never working towards a particular goal, just ticking off events. Finishing every last race sees you rewarded with a two-line pep talk from your engineer, who simply reminds you of the multiplayer arm of the game. The legacy of its bit-by-bit, drip-feed development is an extensive range of competent but oddly featureless tournaments and locations. The vibe is unflatteringly asinine, and this could easily have been improved for the console port.
There’s also the broader issue of the game’s mobile development origins. The Switch version spares players from being swindled through transactional content, and with dozens of routes and hundreds of races, there’s no shortage of action to keep players occupied. However, without a meaningful framework, races feel curiously insignificant, like you’re never working towards a particular goal, just ticking off events. Finishing every last race sees you rewarded with a two-line pep talk from your engineer, who simply reminds you of the multiplayer arm of the game. The legacy of its bit-by-bit, drip-feed development is an extensive range of competent but oddly featureless tournaments and locations. The vibe is unflatteringly asinine, and this could easily have been improved for the console port.
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The same is true of many of the layouts, which feature a prevalence of back-and-forth sweeps, but rarely any defining or distinctive characteristics. The garage line-up is modest, something the game fails to disguise behind a horde of duplicate models, which feature unique decals but otherwise little in the way of new driving experiences. It’s a shame that all the events boil down to single races and time trials, as even these play out strikingly similarly, with the chief difference being that you can collide with opponents and drive through ghost cars.
The music is serviceable but uninspired, the engine notes pretty meaty. The online multiplayer allows players to compete against others in the form of time trials with ghosts, and being promoted through the ranks is an engaging and surprisingly moreish process. It makes a nice accompaniment to the lengthy single-player mode and a credible alternative to local multiplayer. Gear.Club Unlimited lacks the personality and technical quality of leading alternatives, but by offering a nice halfway house of simulation and accessibility, it proves a decent option for Switch gamers.
The music is serviceable but uninspired, the engine notes pretty meaty. The online multiplayer allows players to compete against others in the form of time trials with ghosts, and being promoted through the ranks is an engaging and surprisingly moreish process. It makes a nice accompaniment to the lengthy single-player mode and a credible alternative to local multiplayer. Gear.Club Unlimited lacks the personality and technical quality of leading alternatives, but by offering a nice halfway house of simulation and accessibility, it proves a decent option for Switch gamers.
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VERDICT"A mountain of races, decent handling, and good local multiplayer options ensure Gear.Club Unlimited is a serviceable simcade option for Switch games. Technical hiccups and asinine design mean it's not match for the genre's best, however." OVERALL: 6/10 |
OTHER SIMCADES WITH ONLINE ELEMENTS REVIEWED
Forza Horizon 2 (2014, Xbox One)
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DriveClub (2014, PlayStation 4)
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