Sports games are not normally to my liking, so I always ignore any news or events about them, however a few days ago Ubisoft announced the public beta of one of their future titles, Riders Republic. When I watched the trailer and saw what it was about it caught my attention because it doesn't look like the typical sports game, I think it has several interesting and original things, so I decided to give it a try.
When you start the first thing the game asks you to do is to create your character, here you can edit your hair, skin color, beard, eyes and little else, it is not a complete customization system, but it is quite interesting to see something like this in games of this style.
Once you have created your character you will go to the track, to a small tutorial to familiarize yourself with the controls and where the game will show you some of the circuits it has, once you complete it you will start "your story" which, as a summary, is about a boy or girl who is starting in the world of "extreme" sports and you must win races or challenges to build a reputation in that world, quite simple.
The types of races you'll encounter here are mountain biking, snow skiing and my personal favorite, flying a rocket pack through the rocks, seriously, does this last sport really exist? Because the game makes it look wonderful.
A curious detail is that when you are in the story, the challenges are played against real people who are also playing the story, they are not bots, it is a detail that I liked, it gives some "difficulty" if you want to reach the top and get rewards.
Another novelty is that, unlike other games of this style, here when you are not in a race you will have the possibility to freely explore the world, something like a "mini-open world". Being only a beta I can't say for sure if there will be missions outside the sport, such as building relationships with other characters, getting items and such things, but what I can say is that the "exploration" you are given is quite large compared to other sports titles.
In addition to the story mode you can also play with your friends, you can invite them and challenge them to one or more races, in one game you can invite a total of 11 friends, so it can be fun to organize a mini competition between you.
Overall I found Riders quite fun, I think it is a title that tries to innovate in the sports genre and although I enjoyed playing the beta, I think it is a game to pass the time and if you have a group of friends to play some races with them, I do not think it is a title to devote hundreds and hundreds of hours.
