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Maverick Games is confident that Clutch can cut through the noise. When Forza Horizon 5 director Mike Brown exited Playground Games with a cadre of the studio's senior leadership team in 2022, the intention was to create a different type of open-world racing game. Now, little over three years of development time later, and with Maverick having been the victim of publisher Amazon Game Studios' shifting priorities, the newly independent team is finally ready to reveal its work to the world.
Clutch makes an excellent first impression. Maverick is walking a fine line between professional circuit racing and race-and-chase cinematic storytelling, where escalating pursuits and blistering getaway missions push you out into a lush open-world composite of the French Riviera. The presentation is absolutely sublime, built in a heavily modified version of Unreal Engine 5; Clutch can deliver the immersive visual fidelity and expansive soundscapes that came to define the Playground and Turn 10 Forza games, so that Maverick has been able to capture this feel after starting over from scratch is certainly impressive.
Forza comparisons are inevitable given the origins of the studio, but I get the sense that Clutch is trying to fill the void in the market left by the absence of new Need for Speed games. I got some Hot Pursuit and Most Wanted vibes as police presence ramped up in high-speed chases around the open-world, and the focus on single-player storytelling certainly echoes the Ghost Games era of NFS, from the 2015 reboot through Payback, Heat, and Unbound. I should note that Clutch will contain multiplayer elements and shared-sandbox elements, although Maverick isn't quite ready to get into all that just yet.
When I sit down with the studio at Summer Game Fest, the intention is to introduce the siblings at the heart of the story and highlight the way Clutch can shift its action between different styles. You'll hit the RK1 (a proving ground tournament for the world's top drivers) in slick circuit races, driving for social currency with the underground car community dubbed the Midnight Collective, and get involved in more considered storytelling as one of the two protagonists becomes indebted to a criminal element.
Maverick let me get hands-on with Clutch once this was all said and done, where I was able to take a vehicle out around a track for a couple of laps. It wasn't clear what sort of assists and settings the team had activated, but I can say that this is absolutely within the 'SimCade' genre of racing games – more forgiving than Gran Turismo and Forza Motorsport, less arcadey than Burnout, and absolutely in that NFS and Horizon sphere of influence. The driving model is impressive, challenging without being overbearing. I'm certainly keen to play more of it and see how vehicles handle once I'm able to play around with the impressive suite of customization options available.
My concern with Maverick right now is that I think this new IP is trying to do too much too quickly. Missions set in the open-world seem very on-rails, although creative director Mike Brown assures me that "at any time you could drive anywhere in the world" to pursue collectibles or challenges, "although you can't change where your route is set as we need you to reach certain locations to push the story forward." At certain moments (such as key story beats and car meets) you're able to get out of your car and slowly walk around, with one example having you investigate a sprawling mansion for a way to gain access to a supercar to steal. One chase sequence had such a glacial sense of speed that I wouldn't have known we were moving beyond 30mph if the speedometer wasn't saying otherwise.
That aforementioned supercar has a harpoon gadget bolted onto the underside of its chassis, introducing a mechanic which seems wholly unnecessary. While it can't be used in RK1 tournament races, open-world pursuits with cops and robbers will let you utilize harpoon swing points to make sharp turns around corners. "If you come across a tagged harpoon swing point, you're able to connect to it, but you still have to press that button again to detach from it – there's a skill check there, so if you stay connected for too long you're probably going to crash the car," says Brown. It's a neat idea, but I'm not sure it's all that necessary when the handbrake is right there.
If you come across a harpoon swing point you're able to connect to it, but you still have to press that button again to detach from it
Mike Brown, creative director
And then there's the Midnight Collective races, which are run by a famous in-universe podcaster. This is where Clutch lost me. The game is set in the modern day, and is exceptionally online. In an instant, you aren't driving for pole position, but for likes. "Hey chat…" is a common refrain in this arena, as valuable real estate of the screen is consumed by an in-universe sprawl of text as viewers of the live stream comment on the race in real time. Eventually, requests start flooding in – donations of in-game credits offered for pulling off near-misses and other stunts. It's a little bleak.
Clutch is a really interesting addition to the racing genre, and there's a lot to like about what Maverick is putting out into the world. This is a confident first showing, but still I have a lingering fear that it's trying to get off the line too fast. With a long stretch of road to go ahead of the Spring 2027 release window, I do hope that some of my concerns will be allayed as more is shown to the world.
Clutch is set to launch on PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X in 2027. Check out all the other upcoming games for 2026 and beyond while you wait.
