The team at Milestone S.R.L are back again for their fifth installment of the Ride series with RIDE 5. The last title was released back in October 2020, and it’s come a long way since 2015 when RIDE was first released. This is the biggest title to date, with 270 licensed motorcycles built into 20 official manufacturers, and you have the choice of racing on 44 real and fictional tracks on day one of release.

I spent the most time on the career mode because it had all of the game modes built into it, and with the rewards for getting points being more bikes, the only complaint I had was the endurance modes seemed to bug out a little. The timer would hit zero and the game would keep going, but that is not a game-breaking thing. The career mode is broken into 4 acts, and within, you have the selection of different minor championships that you can compete in, and inside of that could be three or four races you need to complete. As you are starting your racing career, you’re making both friends and rivals, and I love how much of a range of motorcycles there was, anywhere from vintage Suzuki motorcycles to my favorite bike, the Kawasaki Ninja H2R. It had something to please everyone. While trying to get gold to score the most points, the time trials definitely brought the competitive side out of me.

If you want a little more relaxed gameplay, rather than jumping straight into a racing career, you have the option of quick modes, which are further broken up into five different modes – Quick Race, Time Trials, Endurance, Race Creator, and Split Screen. I found I spent the most time on Endurance races where they worked out being the most fun.

If you are just wanting to jump in for a quick race, or even a long race, you have the option to do a single race, using whatever bike tickles your fancy, and take it onto whatever track you know you can dominate the AI opponents. I found myself trying out a variety of different weather and time options, and I also played around with different tyre compounds, which changed the gameplay completely and was some good fun.

Time Trials are good fun if you want to show off how quickly you can put the bike around the track. I found some bikes were very overkill for some tracks but you could hook in some awesome times in doing so with something like the Kawasaki Ninja H2R. The only time I was struggling a little bit was during the career mode and the bikes I was using were far from the best.

Endurance mode was so much fun. The smaller endurance races were set for 20 minutes, but you could increase the time from there. As with the real races, you use fuel and wear down your tyres, so you’ll need to pull into the pits to top up on fuel and get new rubber, but the best part is working out the best time to do them. I seemed to always be a little early or a little late and would never win, but I’d place within the top 5. The starting animation was awesome, featuring the riders on one side of the track and the bikes angled on the other side before the racers run to their bikes before racing off, and the rest is history.

Race Creator is a little bit more fun for people who like creating competitions, and here, you can go in and edit everything down to the competition’s logo. You can also add as many AI riders as you want, so you could have a 1v1 endurance race if you really want to, and you can set your preferred weather. It gives you complete control over your experience.

Like the good partner she is, I talked her into jumping in for one race with me to test out the split screen, and needless to say, it always brings back some awesome memories, but like most people, I also like that full-screen racing experience. I think the part I loved the most was that she always knew where I was on the track, so she would use her bike as a wrecking ball to bully me, but it was a good time and a few good laughs.

Unfortunately, due to us reviewing the game before its release, we could not dive into the multiplayer aspect, but this section will be updated once the game is live for us to throw ourselves head-first into it.

I’m not an editor by any means, and I don’t have any creativity in the slightest. The editor mode is such a simple idea that it helps people like me with that customisable aspect of their riders and bikes. The editor is broken down into layers, like most editors, and you can choose each layer which can be anything from a picture or a pattern to solid colours, and this works with anything from the bikes themselves to the helmets of your riders, meaning you can have a truly unique and uniform design. For all the graphic creators out there, you have the option to upload them so anyone can go and download and use them, and this is great for people like me who are not creative but love seeing the designs other people come up with.

Technology has come a long way with gaming and the different things people can do with sounds now are purely amazing. Hearing the Kawasaki Ninja H2R roar to life, or the turbo flutter as I’m gearing down to hit the apex was incredible, but putting an aftermarket exhaust on the bikes in the customisation menu didn’t seem to make much of a difference here, but cosmetically, it looked awesome. Unfortunately, unlike some other racing games, there was no commentary during a race, and there didn’t seem to be any voice acting in between races, which was a little disappointing. It would have added another level of immersion to your created rider and made it that little bit more fun.

The controls for RIDE 5 had been done really well, just for the pure fact that it races like a simulation, where you need to lean into the corners and make use of the front and rear brakes. You also had the option to take it back to the roots of motorcycle racing games where you can use the right trigger to engage both brakes, and the bike will still lean into corners, but you just needed to move the analog stick. I ended up leaving the settings like this, as I missed playing games back in the day with the same simplicity.

You can alter the controls to your liking, but like 99% of racing games, your right trigger is your acceleration and the left trigger is your brake, and then you can use the main buttons to change gears. The controls for motorcycle games are always something that ends up being a massive part of the game because it will either make or break the gaming experience, but it was really well done and the developers made the controls as easy to use as possible.

Graphics have come so far and still amaze me with how realistic and beautiful games can look, and with your simulation racing games, this is no exception. No stone was left unturned with the bikes and they look absolutely amazing. The reflections and how the paint shines looks magical. The only thing that I would say let the graphics down a little was the ground on the tracks. The asphalt itself looked amazing, but when you are near the gravel “Kitty Litter,” it just looked off compared to the rest of the game, and I’m still yet to see a game where it actually looks like gravel, and not so much just a textured tan coloured layer.

The team went above and beyond with everything else, from the UI to how the clouds looked whilst racing on a nice sunset around one of the tracks, as they have moved away from the 2D photos and gone to 3D computer-generated clouds, and it looks beautiful, to say the least. The different times and weather patterns also looked really well done and super realistic so you knew what time it was, and it really used the power of the current generation of consoles.

If you are into serious simulation racing, or even more arcade-feeling and chilled racing, RIDE 5 has been designed just for you. The fact you can play the game how you want to, and the amazing sounds of the bikes racing around are so immersive. The way bikes and tracks look and behave depending on the weather and tyre compound you have chosen pulls you so far into this game that anyone who loves motorcycles will be all over it.

Written by: Hayden Nelson