Gear.Club review
+ Universal App
FREE! Buy now!

Gear.Club review

Our Review by Campbell Bird on October 31st, 2016
Rating: starstarstarhalfstarblankstar :: SPEED BUMPS
Share This:

This racing game takes a few pages out Forza's book, but feels needlessly bulky and inelegant at times.

Developer: Eden Games Mobile

Price: Free
Version: 1.6.3
App Reviewed on: iPad Air 2

Graphics/Sound Rating: starstarstarstarhalfstar
User Interface Rating: starstarblankstarblankstarblankstar
Gameplay Rating: starstarstarhalfstarblankstar
Replay Value Rating: starstarstarhalfstarblankstar

Overall Rating: starstarstarhalfstarblankstar

Games like Asphalt 8: Airborn and AG Drive have already graced mobile to scratch your itch for games like Burnout and Wipeout respectively, and Eden Games seems to be going for something similar with Gear.Club. Gear.Club resembles Forza Motorsport games in a lot of respects, but some rough spots and questionable design choices hold it back.

Simulating Forza

The racing in Gear.Club leans toward the more realistic side of things, with players taking control of real-world cars and competing in races that require careful braking and car tuning adjustments to maximize both speed and control of your vehicle. There are a lot of leagues and car divisions in the game, but every individual event in the game is some form time trial or just a straightforward race.

The Forza influence on Gear.Club is very obvious. Arguably the two most notable innovations to realistic-style racing games–the driving line and rewind ability–debuted in the Forza series and are present in Gear.Club.

Gearing up

Outside of racing in Gear.Club is a lot of car and facility management. Most of this management surrounds the tuning of your vehicles and outfitting them with new parts, but there is also a layer to the game that resembles something more like a base building game.

True to its name, this racing game tasks you with making an actual motor club, complete with gear head mechanics to work on your cars and engineeers to build new facilities in your garage. Since this is a free-to-play game, you can rest assured that all of this building is fraught with timers, currencies, and other gating mechanics.

Meandering menus

The free-to-play barriers in Gear.Club are a little inconvenient, but otherwise surmountable. What's more troublesome are the game's menus, navigation, and layers of gameplay that take away from the racing.

Most of this issue can be laid at the feet of Gear.Club's menu system which–while pretty–is not particularly user friendly. Whether you're trying to buy a car at a dealership, build a new pieces of your facility, or even select a race, everything just takes a little longer and is a little less clear than it should be.

This, paired with managing your facility, vehicles, and employees, really puts a damper on what Gear.Club's focus should be, which is racing cars.

The bottom line

Gear.Club is a cool racing game that takes what's great about Forza and places it into a serviceable, mobile form. If some of its menus and mechanics were streamlined a little better, it could be truly great. Until then, Gear.Club is a pretty great racing game that's a little to cumbersome to bother with.

Share This: