Ride Review - Project CARS for bike lovers

Ride Review - Project CARS for bike lovers
by Martin McCurdie

Car racing simulations like Gran Turismo, Forza Motorsport and the recent Project CARS offer fans a wide variety of different cars from a range of different vehicle classes across lots of real and fictional racing circuits. Motorbikes are not so well catered for with only Milestone's own Moto GP series the only game series that is still getting annual installments but focuses purely on the high octane Moto GP classes of superbikes on official courses from the Moto GP calendar.

What Milestone have created with Ride is a game with a wide variety of different road and racing bikes from a range of different power classes and from loads of different manufacturers and a huge list of real and fictional tracks that have been cherry picked from some of the best and most popular racing circuits and locations in the world. Favourites like Donnington, Milano and Suzuka fill out the roster of real world official circuits and road courses set in scenic locales like North Wales and The French Riviera.

Career mode is structured similarly to Gran Turismo in that you select from the different bike classes and choose an event ranging from single races, team races which pairs you up with an AI rider, multi-race championships, drag races and track day time trial events. You need to earn money by completing races to buy new bikes, upgraded parts and outfits for your rider. The higher your finishing position the more cash you will earn.

You get to create a personalised rider and can buy new gear for him or her to wear from a large list of different suits and helmets with different designs from officially licensed manufacturers. Bikes can also be upgraded with aftermarket parts to improve performance and there is extensive tuning options. There are also a lot of different driving aids to help you like assisted steering and braking, traction control, automatic tuck in and one button for both front and rear brakes with the game deciding when to apply them. You can turn all of these assists off of course if you want the full realistic experience and have seperate buttons for both sets of brakes, a button for tucking in your legs when leaning into corners and no other assistance or any combination to your liking. Controls can be mapped to any button of your choosing in the options menu to fully customise them to your personal preference.

There is a rewind feature as seen in many car racing games that allows you to rewind time a few seconds if you crash a set number of times though here there is a brief cool down period between when you can use it so if you mess up you do have to get it right the second time as you wont be able to have a third attempt.

The graphics are very good, bikes and riders are highly detailed, the tracks look very nice with lots of detail in the road textures, scenery and crowds of on-lookers are animated very well. The handling and physics are very good and very realistic and the bikes all sound really good as well. The AI is very good and provides a stiff challenge even on the easiest setting and winning races takes a fair amount of practice as you learn how to take corners quicker. Up to 16 riders in a race at once and the game clips a long at a fairly solid 30fps and gives a very good sensation of speed. Though there are no weather or night racing options though hopefully this will be added if a sequel is made.

In Free Play you can take any bike in the game on any track and race against the AI or a friend in split screen. Online multiplayer allows up to 16 players as well. Though it would have been nice to do the team races in the career with a split screen or online partner.

Ride is a highly enjoyable bike racing sim and offers fans a huge range of bikes from various manufacturers and a huge track roster to race them on that is the best game of it's kind since Tourist Trophy on the PS2. Bike lovers will adore it and there are plenty of options to make it accessible to players of all skill levels. With a vast career mode to conquer, tons of customisation options, split screen 2 player racing and 16 player online Ride is a substantial package that will keep bike nuts satisfied for months and months. Its not quite the full package that Project CARS is to car fanatics with missing features like weather, day/night cycles and overall polish and attention to detail is considerably less intricate but Ride is currently the best bike game on the market in my humble opinion.
8/10

Version Tested: Xbox One
Other Versions Available: PS4, PS3, 360 & PC
Developer: Milestone
Publisher: Milestone
Release Date: 27/3/15

Great review mate. If I didn't have so many games going at the moment I would probably get it. Will think of this game when I get through my current lot.

Nice review mate - must revisit this at some point.