Rise: Race The Future

My first question before loading up any arcade racer is always the same: can I hand the controller to someone mid-session and have them screaming at the TV inside two minutes? With Rise: Race The Future, the answer is yes on the racing side and a flat no on the social side, and that tension defines the whole experience. The hook here is a near-future spin on rally-arcade that draws heavy comparisons to SEGA Rally and Ridge Racer. Four distinct worlds, each with fast, intermediate, and twisty track variants, mean you get real layout variety without the courses feeling copy-pasted. The star mechanic is the amphibious handling: your cars tear through dirt and gravel with a loose, tail-happy slide, then seamlessly transition to hovering over large water sections where the physics loosen up further and speeds push well past 100mph. It is a genuinely clever wrinkle. The water zones demand a different kind of concentration than the land sections, and pulling a clean line through both back-to-back is satisfying in the way old Namco arcade cabinets used to be. Three boost modes give you tactical options for overtaking, and the challenge mode's 64 one-off races with specific objectives, things like "never drop below 50mph" or "don't use boost", keep the solo content from going stale too fast. Ten cars are on offer, unlocked through challenges, and they handle noticeably differently from each other. Here is where I have to be straight with you though. The early-game cars feel underpowered and borderline unresponsive: spinning out the AI is trivially easy, and if you get collected in a wall yourself you can basically restart the race. Reviewer consensus across multiple outlets was consistent on this point, that the first few hours are genuinely frustrating and the handling only starts clicking once you reach the mid-to-late car roster. Stick with it and the physics reward patience. Bail early and you will write the game off unfairly. On PC with analogue triggers you at least have full throttle control, which is a meaningful advantage over some other platform versions. No wheel or HOTAS support appears to be present, so a gamepad is your best bet and the game is tuned for it. Visually, Rise punches well above its indie budget. The environments, snowy lakes, tropical coastal zones, desert craters, look generic in premise but genuinely attractive in execution, with mud splattering on bodywork and water droplets hitting the screen mid-zone. Ultra settings on PC are legitimately pretty. The sound design is workmanlike, high-tempo arcade music that does the job and nothing more. The deal-breaker for a chunk of potential buyers is this: there is no multiplayer of any kind. No local split-screen, no online racing, no leaderboards to at least compare times with friends. For a game built around short, punchy races that would be a fantastic fit for couch sessions, the omission stings hard. It is a solo-only experience, full stop. If you and three others are looking for your next group racer, Rise is not it. For a single-player arcade racing fan who misses the feel of mid-2000s rally-arcade games, Rise: Race The Future is a solid, visually attractive time-sink once you push through the rough opening hours. For anyone who treats "is it fun for four people" as a baseline requirement, give it a skip.

Riley · Scout Team

Sports & racing

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