Bugbear Entertainment has been hard at work on a much different Ridge Racer, but it’s clear than this new game isn’t being made to completely take the place of the more familiar franchise that’s been a key title for nearly every console it’s appeared on. Rather, Unbounded is a high-impact spin-off that takes the drift-crazy gameplay and fictional vehicles the series in famous for, adds in destructible elements and the ability to create your own courses and hits the ground running. I took a demo build for a spin at a Namco Bandai event about two weeks back and liked what I played quite a lot. There’s definitely a nod to Criterion Studios’ last few Burnout games (as well as Burnout-inspired titles such as Split Second) as well as Bugbear’s own FlatOut series. As Burnout has morphed into a top-down family fun arcade game with disco tunes blasting during crashes and FlatOut has been retired (for the time being), it looks as RRU will be the go-to game for crash fans when it’s released next year.

Even in its early state, the Unbounded demo absolutely blazes along at a killer pace with solid controls, a superb draw distance and not a pinch of slowdown in the frantic gas and crash action. The single city course was pretty massive and filled with shortcuts, jumps and plenty of things to wreck (or wreck into). Key to successfully accessing shortcuts (nicely labeled as “DESTROY” points around the course) was pulling off killer drifts, forcing opponents to crash into stuff and a few other moves. Once you’ve built up enough boost, you can blast through a DESTROY point smash more stuff and/or pull off a wicked jump and unlock a shortcut that stays open as long for that particular race. Opponent AI was pretty fierce, although they can and will wreck or be forced to wreck if you’re good enough at bumping them into a wall or oncoming traffic. Physics are suitably arcade-like and fun to watch, but as there was only one car to play with, there was no way to see how other rides handled. I’m hoping the final games adds in a few types of drift-centric cars and some light cosmetic customization options (or even a Rage Racer style skin editor), but we’ll see what happens in the coming months as development continues.

As amazing as the sense of speed was, Bugbear has implemented some really nice visual elements into the interface so that your score, position and other important info appears as text along the course. It’s an elegant yet highly dynamic way of conveying data that works perfectly. A good thing, since the sense of speed in exhilarating as well as distracting. As far as the level of destruction goes, smashing through road dividers, some track side objects and other cars is fun stuff, but you’ll need to keep an eye on your car’s damage icon. Take too many hits of bash carelessly into everything and your ride is destroyed, costing you whatever position you had and a ton of race time. It took a few tries to finish in first place, but each time I hopped back into the race, I saw something I’d missed on the previous run. Bugbear knows how to pack a game world full of distractions, many of which are bad for your car to slam into at full speed. I’m hoping the final version adds weather effects and even more detail without sacrificing the frame rate. If anyone can do this, it’s definitely the team at Bugbear.

While multiplayer and the City Creator features weren’t shown at the event, they’re both going to be key factors in determining this game’s success at retail. Bugbear has posted info on their RRU developer blog about the City Creator and based on that info, plus what I heard at the event, this will be something that’s going to be huge from day one. I had RRU on my radar as soon as I heard who was making the game – now, after playing the demo, it’s definitely moved up to one of my most wanted racers of 2012. With the genre filled with serious sim-like experiences or games that focus so much on fiddling and tinkering with rides to no end, it’s great to see a pick up and play title like RRU set to hit the road and potentially blow the doors off some of those super-elite driving experiences. While the game’s March 2012 launch might seem far away, it’s rushing up in the rear view mirror really fast for fans of arcade racers. Make sure to keep an eye peeled for updates as the game gets closer to its release…