Riders Republic is a lot like Steep, Ubisoft’s brilliant winter sports mix-up. It’s like Steep in the fact that it throws a bunch of different sports together and lets them spark off each other. It’s like Steep in that you can pull back to a gigantic map of the whole environment whenever you want. It’s like Steep in that you’re chucked in with a bunch of other players – this is a massively multiplayer playground. But then there’s this element that is new to Riders Republic. In the E3 trailer I found myself craning my head, as it were, to catch a glimpse of… could that be… was that? Yes, while being a bit like Steep Riders Republic is also a super group of America’s National Parks.
A lot of them are here. Bryce Canyon with its radioactive peach earth and spindly towers, Sequoia with those vast trees, whose branches must hold the sky. Yosemite, the best of all parks, with Half-Dome glowing mauve against a bloomy morning sky. A bunch of them, knocked together. It’s such a brilliant idea I’m surprised it’s taken anyone this long to do it.
Obv, since this is Ubisoft doing it, there’s a certain maximalism in play. Sports range from BMX biking to paragliding and snowboarding and several things that seem to involve rocket packs. Everything is points, everything is progress, and everything can be done in multiplayer – the whole career mode and much more besides. The avatars all look like Just Dance went on holiday, and obviously you can customise and unlock gear and upgrade it and tweak it and all of that. The central hub is a 3D menu that doubles as the kind of festival Jess Glynne’s always going to in videos. Of course Ubisoft would make an interactive menu with its own food trucks.
