Riders Republic

• Unlike Steep, you can play offline via the Zen Mode on the main menu. Meat of the game is still an online-only thing. If that doesn't sound good to you, pass. It's fine.

• Your gear has stats now, so you have to level up your career in order to get gear that doesn't suck ass. You cannot buy gear, only earn or find it. Clothes, on the other hand, you can purchase with in-game money. (Also with IRL money for premium items, but I won't sway you one way or the other on that; it's your money.)

• As long as you land straight enough, you will land correctly. Goes from perfect to medium to bad. If you get perfect landings in a row, you get more score as well.

• The stamina system in Steep is still somewhat present here. If you keep landing from high drops or not landing straight, your screen will go black-and-white while a heartbeat plays. Any more than that and you run the risk of eating dirt. The Absorption stat dictates how much you can take before you fall. Perfect landings are best because they take the least stamina and can allow you to land otherwise impossible jumps if you got a medium or bad landing.

• For the purposes of scoring, every 180 degree rotation counts as a new trick. You can land backwards on your bike and the rider will correct provided that you are not doing a stupid high jump or something. The game also has a tutorial that will tell you how many degrees you need to be at in order to land things like a Misty or a Rodeo.

• Unlike Steep, you can actually pause during an event and not get your ass sent back to the very start. It's usually a lot faster to tap the Backtrack button once and then hit Restart if you feel something isn't going your way instead of using the pause menu to restart.

• No Fall is not bailing. No Backtrack is not using the Backtrack function at all. No Missed Checkpoint is exactly that. No Brake is also exactly that. If something says No Backtrack and only that, you can intentionally miss a checkpoint if you need help getting back onto the track. Things like that are important if you want to do things without unnecessarily restarting.

• You can also get off of your bike/snowboard/skis/etc. at will and the game will not penalize you for it during an event. You can use this if you're stuck on a rock or something and you need to get off pronto. Keep in mind if you're above a certain speed when you do this, you will eat dirt. However, if you're already in the air when you get off, you can (for some reason) slow yourself down a bit and then get back on before you land and then you will not wipe out. This is useful if you're riding something bad.

• Additionally, the Mass Races are every half hour and take about 10-15 minutes to work through depending on the overall skill level and the fact that you will have about 25-32 people with varying qualities of internet connection to worry about. If it helps, when the round starts, give everyone else a half second and then go. You'll be less likely to get shoved into something and get sent to the back anyway.

• For all multiplayer races, you have about 45 seconds after the first place rider crosses the line to cross it yourself. Otherwise, you get saddled with a DNF.