French developer Eden Games is quite the expert at lower budget, but generally enjoyable racers – quite recently, they’ve made Garfield Kart 2 as well. But more so than their licensed titles, it’s the Gear.Club Unlimited games that stood out – finding their niche audience seeking lower budget, yet enjoyable arcade romps. With the 3rd game upon us on Nintendo Switch 2, and later in 2026 on other platforms, here’s DayOne‘s review for Gear.Club Unlimited 3!
You know what really grinds my gears?
We barely just rebranded, and we’re already knee-deep in Switch 2 content, how about that? The latest on our list is Gear.Club Unlimited 3, the third installment of this budget racing franchise with humble mobile origins, but one that garnered a decent following especially on the Nintendo Switch consoles. It has since appeared on most other platforms, so PlayStation, Xbox and PC alike. But let’s be real for a second: while competition on those platforms is massive, with franchises like Forza, Need For Speed, The Crew and countless others always around, on Nintendo‘s consoles the franchise has had an easier life. A weaker system, one that doesn’t even have some of the biggest racers on the market. No surprise, then, that both Gear.Club Unlimited games are quite popular picks, during discounts – with both games often going away for a couple dollars, when on sale.
That isn’t to say the franchise lacks merit or depth, or that it’s only interesting due to a lack of better alternatives. The second game, especially, has grown to be quite the solid racer, throughout the years, as it received various updates and additions. An accessible arcade driving model. A good selection of licensed cars. Plenty of tracks to race on, in various modes too. A robust, if slightly grindy, career mode with plenty of car customization and upgrades. Even your own garage can be customized! Honestly, if you have a spare bucks, it’s still worth a shot, and I’ve found it more than pleasant even on Xbox where, as said, plenty of higher budget alternatives exist.
Unlike Valve, Eden Games can count to 3
This third entry in the franchise comes a whopping 8 years after the first iteration of the 2nd game. And for this comeback, they seemingly joined on this oddly specific recent trend. No, they didn’t go roguelike or extraction shooter on us. Eden Games‘ latest takes us to Japan – just like Assassin’s Creed did last year, and how the racing behemoth Forza Horizon will, later this year. What can you say? Even beyond the Japanese car culture and racing classics, there’s just something particularly fascinating about drifting down tight mountain corners, as sakura trees shower us with petals. Cliché or otherwise, I’m always up for some good racing in Japan.
Gear.Club Unlimited 3 retains a simple, accessible arcade driving model. At times, perhaps, too simple, as it’s quite easy to keep the control of the car at any time. There is actually not much player agency in the settings, either – you can enable auto-brakes, manual gears and add some traction control, but that’s about it. No one-hand controls, racing lines and so forth. And I really don’t say this to be mean, but a heads-up to the folks at Eden Games: language and a choice between imperial or metric units are not a matter of accessibility, and only having those options behind such a sub-menu feels incredibly limiting in 2026.
The racing doesn’t quite match the driving
But other than these issues, the general sensations behind the wheel are sound. Be it in the cockpit, in third person view or on the hood of the car, the camera angles are all pretty good, with the cars’ handling making for a legitimately enjoyable arcade experience. Unfortunately, the quality of the racing doesn’t quite live up to the solid standards of the driving. Opponent AI is not very aggressive, and while they’re fast on straights, they seem to love braking about 3 business days early when entering corners, making overtakes laughably easy at times. It does feel like there’s some slight rubber-banding, as I tend to gain the lead and a few seconds gap quite quickly, but then rarely manage to pull much farther away afterwards. Either way, despite the lack of a rewind system or difficulty settings in the campaign, I barely ever had to retry a single race. Winning first try was pretty easy almost every time.
This would be less of an issue if the game had a robust multiplayer, but unfortunately, it does not. While Gear.Club Unlimited 2 also launched without online multiplayer, nowadays it features proper online modes for up to 8 players, on top of split-screen up to 4. As of today, Gear.Club Unlimited 3 features no multiplayer whatsoever, and split-screen is limited to only 2 players. While it’s likely this will be improved post-launch, this is a huge step back from the currently available previous game. Indeed, the amount of content is a bit lacking, considering the years of updates the previous game got. Only about 50 tracks, from the 250+ races of the second game. Only two environments, Japan and France, down from the 4 biomes of the previous game. Okay, content can be added later, but is the general experience enough of an upgrade to warrant a purchase?
60FPS, at last!
I think the racing fans out there will already shout “Yes!” to the previous question, after reading the header. Gear.Club Unlimited 3 features two distinct graphics settings: Graphics and Performance. Predictably, the former targets 30FPS, while the latter aims for 60. In handheld mode, both modes feel quite stable and consistent. Performance mode, especially, shines in handheld mode, as occasional framerate drops are mitigated by the system’s VRR (variable refresh rate) usage. Indeed, when I played in docked mode, I noticed a slightly choppier framerate at times, but nothing particularly impactful or annoying. The game features fairly good-looking car models, while other things are a bit hit or miss. Solid light effects and the garages look dynamic and detailed, but the surroundings of tracks look rather stale and low resolution when you look at it. Though, at least, they appear fine in motion.
The solid performance is seemingly achieved via a copious amount of DLSS usage, which keeps the game’s internal resolution fairly low, while the actual output seems higher. This is a blessing for the framerate, but less so for the image clarity. In handheld mode, in particular, it is extremely noticeable how everything looks a bit smudged. Trees show artifacts, the speed counter on the car’s dash has obvious ghosting, and things in the distance never look as sharp as they should. Docked mode seemingly targets a much higher internal resolution, as things seemed sharper and more defined even on my bigger OLED, at the detriment however of VRR – which, as you may know, is only supported in handheld mode. But anyway, this is the first Gear.Club Unlimited game to have a 60FPS mode on Switch consoles. That, alone, may be quite worth the upgrade for fans of the series. Although I did encounter various game freezes and crashes during my testing of the game which, I hope, will be fixed for the launch window. All in all, anyhow, both the actual 3D assets, the image quality and performance are severely lagging behind last month’s sensational Switch 2 port of GRID Legends, making Eden Games’ latest game feel like an upgraded Switch 1 game, rather than something made for the new Nintendo hardware.
No limits! Well, some limits.
Throughout the career, players will encounter various game modes. Standard races, time attacks, and the most creative one of ’em all – duels! In these one versus one races, drivers will have to outpace each other quite consistently throughout the race, as every handful of seconds the driver behind loses health. You also lose health via crashing, so beware. As such, you can’t just sit behind all race and then pull the move – you have to try and snatch the lead as early as you can to avoid taking too much damage. It’s like a fighting game, with visible health bars on top, and it’s pretty cool. The career takes us back and forth between races and garages in Japan and France alike, proposing some different racing styles and biomes in the process. With plenty of optional events and tons of cars to unlock and upgrade, there’s easily a couple dozen hours of content for those seeking single player thrills, with even a few somewhat “surprising” events every once in a while.
The game’s name features the word Unlimited, which isn’t just a naming choice – it’s actually a game mechanic in Gear.Club Unlimited 3. Driving fast, clean, overtaking, narrowly avoiding traffic and such “stunts” earn us points, which fills up the so-called Unlimited bar. Go off the track, bump into others, crash into walls and you’ll lose progress on the bar. The higher you end the race with, the better your material earn rate will be, so to upgrade cars faster it is imperative to drive clean. Unfortunately, like many other things in the game, this system too is a little inconsistent. Sometimes, bumping an opponent or humping the wall in a fast corner has no negative consequences. Other times, putting a single wheel on the dirt or grazing another driver makes you lose plenty of important points.
I’ll come back later
Unfortunately, the actual variety of the content is a little lacking. Two environments is quite the step down from the previous game’s four, and there’s only 5 game modes to play with. Limited AI options, barely any rule customization, most tracks look and play quite similar, aside from a few races with traffic which offer a bit of a twist. Unlocking the game’s many “real world” street cars and upgrading them can also be a quite grindy process, given how many materials upgrades take and how long it takes to gain ’em. Effectively, the game kind of encourages you to sticking to very few cars you keep improving from time to time, as opposed to spending in many others. Forza Horizon’s car shower this ain’t. While I like racers where you get to learn and customize your car, the pacing of the game could definitely be improved.
Gear.Club Unlimited 3 is a tough game to rate. At its core, the driving is sound, the graphics are decent, the game mechanics are interesting, and the career is meaty enough to bother. It even offers a 60 frames per second mode, something previous episodes did not – at least, on Nintendo consoles. On the other hand, it has various important flaws related to the overall racing, and the lack of online multiplayer is a huge step-down from the previous game which did, eventually, add said feature. What we’re left with is a mostly competent, not particularly memorable arcade racer with a handful of highs, but some baffling lows as well. It is a fun game, and on Switch 2 there aren’t too many better alternatives for this kind of racer. But if it follows the previous episode’s path, it may get new content, proper multiplayer and astonishingly deep discounts before long. Perhaps you’re better off waiting for all of that to happen, before jumping in.
Gear.Club Unlimited 3
Played on
Nintendo Switch 2
PROS
- Solid amount of content
- Easy handling
- Duels with traffic are a ton of fun
CONS
- Technically disappointing
- Highly inconsistent AI
- Much less content and variety than in the previous game
- No online multiplayer and local play is limited to 2 players
