Ride 6 Review: Is the Two-Wheeled Festival Truly Convincing?

Ride 6: How Fascinating is the New Festival?

Ride 6 is the new chapter in Milestone's motorcycle series, coming to PC, Xbox, and PlayStation 5. For the occasion, we fired up the Sony console and grabbed the DualSense to hit the gas and bring you the Ride 6 review! The underlying idea is always very fascinating: to create a title for motorcycle enthusiasts that allows them to fill their virtual garage with tons of present and past super bikes. Ride 6 brings with it a proven gameplay system and a simulated driving model that, from episode to episode, has sought to improve.

You start by creating an alter ego and are immediately welcomed by the Ride Fest festival, one of Ride 6's major innovations. Just like in Forza Horizon, we are participating in a mega show where we will have to dedicate ourselves to many events to excel against other riders and become a true two-wheeled legend. Let's temper expectations immediately, because unlike PlayGround Games' car title, Ride 6 does not have a free-roaming base, but the festival idea is represented by a hub where you move between various screens and choose what to do. Dedicate yourself to your career, buy technical clothing, visit new and used motorcycle dealerships, race a quick race, challenge gamers from all over the world with full cross-play, and so on.

In short, the system remains static as in previous episodes, but gains in color and atmosphere. The career, which is the core of the game, offers a series of events to compete in, divided by category and unlockable based on the results obtained. You start with basic races to accumulate points that grant access to increasingly challenging and demanding competitions. For example, you can compete in specific sections (scooters, SBK, street bikes, and so on), where you will find quick races, superpoles, head-to-head challenges, endurance events, and championships, both classic and endurance. Each trial can be passed by achieving a minimum or complete result; for example, finishing in the top five might be enough to pass, but being first overall will give you a greater number of points that will make new sections accessible. Simultaneously, you will see your fame and rider level grow, you will save money, and you will consolidate your relationship with the motorcycle brand you raced with, earning discounts on future purchases. If you have played previous episodes, it is clear that the system is very similar to past ones, although the offering is a bit more varied.

Real Champions and Career: Do the Innovations Really Make a Difference?

Added to all this is the presence of ten champions who have made motorcycling history: Casey Stoner, Troy Bayliss, James Toseland, Guy Martin, Tyler O’Hara, Thomas Chareyre, Niccolò Canepa, Peter Hickman, Skyler Howes, and Ian Hutchinson. Naturally, each of them has their own specialization, with Stoner, Bayliss, and Toseland on superbikes, Guy Martin a master of naked bikes, and so on. Each of these riders has a dedicated event where you will have to test yourself in their specialty until you challenge them. The presence of big names is a welcome novelty, but in practice, it does not impact the game's structure.

Probably, more interaction with riders of this caliber could have been pushed, but the fact remains that Milestone has opened a path that can expand in the future and make the career more appealing. Available circuits and vehicles have increased, as have motorcycle categories. You can ride on about forty tracks, many of which have made world motorcycling history (including four dedicated to off-road), and you will do so with a list of over 340 motorcycle models. To the delight of two-wheel enthusiasts, scooters, naked bikes, sport bikes, supersport bikes, supermotards, enduros, sport bikes prepared for endurance races, and baggers appear—a very welcome novelty, even if, to date, their only available manufacturer is Indian. The choice is truly wide, and the presence of a used motorcycle shop bodes well for the future, with Milestone potentially giving us various gems.

Naturally, the core of the Ride 6 gameplay experience is on the track, thanks to a satisfying and simulated driving model, a Milestone trademark that has improved step by step over the years. This time you can freely switch between Pro and Arcade models, with the latter being decidedly more accessible and able to entertain even casual players who don't want to spend too much time learning the behavior of each motorcycle. The highlight remains Pro driving, and to get familiar with it, there's the Bridgestone-branded driving school, extremely precise in explaining what every virtual rider needs, from throttle and brake management to electronics.

The “ride-play” goes hand in hand with physics and provides excitement and satisfaction to the gamer who is willing to spend time and effort to master a system where the specifications of individual bikes, with their respective spare parts and settings, the peculiarities of the circuits, and weather conditions intertwine. Compared to the previous episode, I found the controls more responsive, especially on less powerful sport bikes. Brakes and tires work decidedly well, perhaps even too well on straight-line braking, where I would have expected more erratic reactions during a full stop at maximum speed. In any case, I am referring to situations I specifically sought out to test all the qualities of Ride 6's driving system, and which you will hardly find yourself using in a race, where braking mainly goes hand in hand with corner management.

Ride 6's Strengths: Tons of Content and an Excellent Driving Model

Today, if I had to nitpick, I would say that baggers feel a bit too “light” to ride. I certainly can't say I've had the good fortune to experience a real track day with a specially prepared Indian, but after many years spent riding various heavily customized cruisers, I must admit I would have expected a more “physical” experience related to this type of motorcycle. Nothing that Milestone cannot revise in future updates, however. Playing on PS5, Ride 6 benefits from the DualSense with haptic feedback and its adaptive triggers that give the player the sensations from the brakes and accelerator. As I have said dozens of times in other reviews, Milestone is a master in the use of this technology. More than in previous episodes, I could "feel" through the right trigger the difference between manual and automatic shifting, with the latter losing some engine revs during some downshifts, resulting in the trigger suddenly decreasing its resistance under pressure and returning a sensation that recalls reality—truly a gem for enthusiasts.

In addition to being able to access many options dedicated to the on-track experience, you can choose the skill of your opponents or leave control to an artificial intelligence that reads your qualities and your driving style to keep the challenge level always adequate. The system works, despite some rare flaws. In a limited number of occasions, during the same event, without me touching anything on my bike, I went from competing head-to-head with my opponents to winning a race easily, only to return to the next one fighting tooth and nail for a podium finish. Furthermore, the problem remains that, sometimes, AI-controlled riders make decidedly aggressive entries against us, risking sending us off track or even causing us to crash. This happens mainly when our trajectory is not perfect, but a more careful behavior would be much more realistic. Mind you, such situations happen more rarely than in the past and the problem is secondary, but the dream would be to see them decrease further.

Ride 6: What Could Have Made It Better?

I would like to point out two other elements that could be improved without particular effort. The first is related to the rewind system which, once again, can be deactivated or activated without a middle ground. The result is that either you play in a totally realistic way or you can rewind time infinitely and repeat a short portion of a race that you are not satisfied with. Of course, everyone could mentally set a usage limit, but having preset options would help self-regulation, so as not to abuse the help. Being able to choose, for example, to have three or five rewinds per session could still provide a “lifeline” in extreme situations, such as an AI-controlled rider ramming you in one of the last corners of the race while you are fighting for the podium. Honestly, I don't think major upheavals would be needed, and the experience would benefit.

In the same way, I would have liked to find the possibility of performing free practice sessions before each career event, so as to be able to learn how to make the most of my bike in the specific race conditions. Although some competitions have a dedicated practice section, in many others you are immediately thrown onto the track, with the result that to get the best out of the situation you have to restart the event or recreate everything in quick mode, abandoning the career and manually reconstructing an identical situation. Ride 6 is a title that focuses entirely on simulation, where players willing not to use driving aids can derive enormous satisfaction from being able to master a circuit or even just take a corner perfectly: why not include an option at the start of the race that allows for practice, even in shorter competitions?

To conclude, let's talk about the technical department, where the guys at Milestone have shown that they have become even more familiar with Unreal Engine 5, and the overall look is more vibrant than its predecessors, with better use of colors and lights. The bikes are all rendered with great attention to detail, apart from some slightly misplaced reflections, and are a real joy for enthusiasts' eyes who can dedicate themselves to observing every tiny detail using the excellent photo mode. On PlayStation 5, Ride 6 runs in 4K at 60 FPS (90 on PS5 Pro) and only in rare cases did I notice the loss of a few frames; at the same time, only once did I observe a slight graphical bug during dozens of hours of testing, a sign that the Milanese development house has worked diligently… although I must report that I experienced a game crash, but it is obvious that with the launch not yet having occurred, some minor flaws may exist and surely improving patches will arrive. As always, the saga shows very little attention to the faces of the riders, and even the famous testimonials could have deserved a little more attention… fortunately, the beautiful helmets cover their heads most of the time. The sound is excellent, with the engines almost always conveying the sensations of their real-life counterparts. Furthermore, there has been a lot of attention to accessibility with a mode dedicated to those with color blindness, the ability to manage the camera's field of view, and gameplay designed to be played with one hand.

Ultimately, Ride 6 is simply the best Ride to play, but at the same time, it is the episode that shows a saga that struggles a bit to evolve, especially regarding the peripheral elements.