The RIDE franchise may be relatively niche among racers, and yet, it’s already at its 6th installment in just over a decade. This time, it’s quite the revolution though. A brand new graphics engine, the debut of off-road races, revolutionized controls, a Forza Horizon-esque presentation… there’s a lot to unpack, so let’s get to it. This is the XboxEra review for RIDE 6, tested on Xbox Series X!
30 years and still kicking
Italian developer Milestone is quite the racing royalty. Ever since the 90’s, they have created a frankly ludicrous amount of extremely high quality racers – of any kind, really. The classic Screamer arcade rally games – coming back in a new, anime-inspired form. The marvelous toy cars of Hot Wheels Unleashed and its even better sequel. Forgotten gems like Gravel. And, of course, their 2-wheel endeavours – such as the excellent licensed MotoGP titles, and the RIDE franchise, having now reached its sixth installment. A studio pushing out racers at this rate is quite impressive, but nonetheless, it’s difficult to come up with innovations and vast improvements with relatively small teams and tight schedules.
Well, RIDE 6 is not content with just being yet another relatively safe sequel – in fact, I’d say it brings the biggest evolution this franchise has seen thus far. Two things immediately stand out – and they’re both related to the game’s presentation. First of, like various other racers by Milestone, we’ve moved from Unreal Engine 4 to 5. While the in-game models and assets haven’t drastically improved, the reflections, lights and general “vibes” of the game went through quite a glow-up. And then there’s RIDE Fest – this game’s equivalent of the Forza Horizon‘s… well, Horizon Festival. There is no open world to explore here, but the presentation feels similar. Coloured banners everywhere, blasting “hip” music, a less serious UI, more focus on cinematic moments. It all gives the title a distinct visual flair, setting itself apart from most bike racers that, frankly, look way too similar to one another.
I’m feelin’ it
Another side of the RIDE experience that received quite the glow-up is the handling. Taking cues from another recent Milestone banger, MotoGP 25 (a game I defined to be the best on the market for traditional motorcycle videogames in my review), RIDE 6 rolls in with two distinct handling experiences: Pro and Arcade. The former is more or less what you may remember from previous RIDE games. While it’s still customizable in its fine details, it’s all about balancing your bike’s weight in turns, managing brakes, even the posture of the rider plays a role in how fast you can go. Setups can be tweaked to optimize your ride. It’s a somewhat difficult task on a controller at times, but tremendously rewarding when things go smoothly.
The latter is Arcade, and it’s the most accessible this series has ever been. The bike’s handling is a lot easier to predict, much less prone to bumps, high-sides and so forth. Unless you turn on automatic braking, you still need to commit to corners properly, and you can’t brake comically late. The bike also doesn’t have the “infinite grip cheat code” that you’d see in the aforementioned MotoGP 25, making for a much more balanced and nuanced experience. Even more so if you turn on the adaptive AI difficulty – that one’s made to find some level of extra pace if they fall behind, and not be uncatchable if they lead. Once again, this feels rather balanced though: it never felt like a cheat code to recover, nor as a call for the AI to break the laws of physics to recover. A handful of riding assists, adaptive AI difficulty, Arcade mode and bam – RIDE 6 is one of the most accessible and fun bike games on the market.
Off the road we go
RIDE has always tried to be a jack of all trades kind of game, offering various different bike race styles rather than laser-focusing on a single discipline. This usually resulted in a… rather average experience, in which neither style felt as polished or fun as found elsewhere. Even Milestone‘s other bike racing games, such as the MotoGP or the SBK entries, felt more adeguate at what they’re doing. This rendered the RIDE games a bit moot. Okay, you can race with scooters and some other wacky bikes, but the best races are to be had on the fastest sport bikes, and those are better in other games.
Well, RIDE 6 has finally solved this issue, by tackling the problem from two distinct directions. First off, as said, the general handling, physics and such feel a lot more satisfying. Now, whether you’re riding a Supersport bike or a moped, the racing experience feels a lot of fun, truly making the different disciplines shine. And second – there’s just way more styles now, with the introduction of off-road events as well. Now, players can participate in dirt bike races and other off-road events as well, and even there the refined riding experience shines. The “flat” dirt races feel different enough from Milestone’s own “bumpy rides” of the Monster Energy Supercross games, which ensures that the games are perfectly complementary now, instead of having RIDE just offering
A complete experience
The colourful presentation aside, the game doesn’t really reinvent the formula for racers, presenting instead a pretty much full list of features. There’s an extensive campaign with tons of racing series to unlock, with even various racing legends like Casey Stoner to challenge. The game offers quite deep bike visual customization, bike upgrades, setups, proper online options (that, once again, we weren’t able to test before launch), but also plenty of options for local play. There’s a powerful photo mode, which I used for all screenshots you see in this article. Even endurance races can be set up, featuring up to 24 hour long marathon sessions with fuel and tyre management playing a part. Shame that the game has a 12 bikes limit – it’s great you can do a massive race like that, even on the iconic Nordschleife, but only 12 bikes is such an antithesis to endurance events.
But in general, I’ve found RIDE 6 to be a very satisfying, complete, polished experience. As said, the 3D assets aren’t all that impressive, but the visual quality is sound and the performance was quite impeccable on my Xbox Series X. The presentation is coherent, I’ve found little to complain about in terms of physics behaviour (though some crashes are still a bit stiff, like in previous games), and I’ve not encountered a single meaningful bug or crash in my hours of playing through the massive single player campaign and beyond. In this day and age, launching a game that doesn’t really lack any major features and is polished in just about every aspect is, unfortunately, rare. So I have to commend Milestone‘s latest there.
Pride of RIDE
It took six entries, but the RIDE franchise has finally graduated. What used to be promising, enjoyable, but ultimately not particularly remarkable motorcycle racers, now gave way to RIDE 6 – a legitimately great bike racing game. Refined graphics, much improved handling, more variety than ever, great customization and a much more coherent presentation turn Milestone’s latest into one of the finest 2-wheel racers out there. If you slept on the RIDE series thus far, start paying attention – RIDE 6 is quite a blast for motorcycle fans.
A copy of the game was provided to us by the publisher.
RIDE 6
Played on
Xbox Series X
PROS
- Very varied racing disciplines
- Excellent improvement to the handling and physics
- Lots of content with no glaring omissions in any area
- Pretty much a faultless experience, in terms of polish
- The festival-style presentation
CONS
- Not that impressive technically, despite the move to Unreal Engine 5
- 12 racer limit really hurts certain modes - endurance, especially
- Perhaps still lacks that "spark" to truly stand out
