24-Hour Races, Over 200 Career Mode Events: RIDE 5 Has Launched

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Motorcycle racing fans are not exactly spoiled with quality simulations - RIDE 5 aims to change that: Milestone's latest bike racer comes with a deep career mode, tons of customizability and even endurance races. The fifth iteration of the franchise is out now for PC via Steam and Epic, PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S.

Image credit: Milestone

While the career mode is not too different from its predecessor, it does offer significant depth, sporting over 200 events that your custom rider you get to create when starting the mode gets to compete in. Players will also encounter rivals that add another layer to the gameplay in career mode. Events are split into two categories, with primary events being necessary to advance your career path, and secondary events being high-risk, high-reward in nature to secure optional bonuses.

Also new is the Sky System that features accurate simulation of time of day (and night, of course) and an in-depth weather system based on dynamic volumetric clouds, taking into account their density and the air and track temperatures to realistically portray changing conditions.

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Time of day, in-depth weather calculations, endurance races - RIDE 5 aims to take the next step in motorcycle racing sims. Image credit: Milestone

Race Around the Clock​

This ties in nicely with the Endurance races that are present in RIDE 5. Events can range from 20 minutes up to 24 hours, and an in-game save system coupled with rewinds make the lives of players who want to take on the challenge of long races a bit more pleasant.

Meanwhile, the revamped physics aim to immerse players in motorcycle racing even more. Visual and physical tire degradation is now present in the game, and the suspension system has been revised as well. At its core, RIDE 5 is still a simulation, and for those who struggle with it, numerous assists are on board as well to help them learn the ins and outs of racing a bike.

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Simulators can be hard to learn, but luckily, RIDE 5 includes multiple assists to teach you how to ride properly. Image credit: Milestone

RIDE 5 includes crossplay in multiplayer, too - but only on consoles. It is listed for PC as well, but only means that players who bought the game on Steam can compete with those that got it via Epic and vice versa, ruling out crossplay with console racers. At least the local split-screen multiplayer makes its comeback.

Content-wise, bike fans will likely find their Nirvana, or at least something close to it: Over 270 motorcycles from 20 manufacturers are waiting to tear around 35 circuits, including locations that are rarely seen in racing games outside of mods, such as Canadian Tire Motorsport Park (Mosport) or Sportsland Sugo.

RIDE 5 - Track List​

  • Autodromo Internacional do Algarve
  • Autopolis
  • Blue Wave
  • Brands Hatch
  • Cadwell Par
  • Canadian Tire Motorsport Park
  • Circuito Costa de Almeria
  • Circuit des 24 Heures de Mans
  • Circuit Ricardo Tormo
  • Daytona International Circuit
  • Donington Park
  • French Riviera
  • Imola
  • Interlagos
  • Kanto
  • Kyalami Racing Circuit
  • Laguna Sega
  • Magny-Cours
  • Monza
  • Mugello
  • North West 200
  • Nurburgring Nordschleife
  • Nurburgring Grand Prix
  • Okayama International Circuit
  • Oulton Park – Europe
  • Road America
  • Road Atlanta
  • Sonoma Raceway
  • Southern 100
  • Snetterton
  • Sportsland Sugo
  • Suzuka Circuit
  • Tsukuba Circuit
  • Ulster GP
  • Utah Motorsports Campus
  • Virginia International Raceway

Additionally, customizablilty is going strong in RIDE 5, which allows players to set up tons of combinations of events in the Race Creator, edit their bikes, suits and helmets, and share their creations online.

Want to get a better impression on the game? Jonas "ChampionJoe" Schulz has already taken a closer look at RIDE 5 for OverTake - check out his review below!


Your Thoughts​

What is your first impression of RIDE 5? Are you looking forward to giving it a go? Let us know in the comments below!
About author
Yannik Haustein
Lifelong motorsport enthusiast and sim racing aficionado, walking racing history encyclopedia.

Sim racing editor, streamer and one half of the SimRacing Buddies podcast (warning, German!).

Heel & Toe Gang 4 life :D

Comments

gah...still playing through Ride 3 to get all bikes (I get 'em all and put at least 100 miles on every one!)!!! Havn't got 4 yet!!! Sales time methinks. ;)
 
A couple questions:

Does the endurance racing have rider swap, with an AI rider I guess?

Is Le Mans the full circuit, Bugatti, or both?

Between this and the new Isle of Man TT game, I'm tempted to jump into motorcycle games.
 
Going by the reviews appearing on Steam this is more Milestone hot garbage.
You mean reviews like this?


The Ride 4 brakes are way snappier and you can brake later and brake into corners making it feel very intuitive and fun to play. It also feels like you can trust your eyes, if you come into a corner in a certain speed you can push the brakes and make the corner most of the time. In Ride 5 you are always too fast no matter if you come in at snail speed or not, it's such a deceiving sense of speed and it make you play like ♥♥♥♥. Sure you can get used to that but why would I get used to something that feels like bicycle speed, it's NOT FUN!


I would (and probably will) try the game for myself, but it seems to me that Milestone can't do nothing right for people, because if they change in one direction, some hate it, if they do it into another, others hate it...
 
There is one thing that I am always complainig about RIDE series. A game like this should definitely have more road courses like Isle of Man, Ulster, Southern 100 or just fictional landscape roads than the classic GP circuits. This is not MotoGP or SBK. Imagine... a stock Ducati Desmosedici and a beautiful ~40km long road course in the sunset. Damn, it would be magnificent.
 
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Looks kind of cool, but it's $130 dollareydoos for the full game. That's a no from me dawg. Maybe later on sale sometime. I'm just not THAT into motorcycle games... Adding VR support would increase my interest slightly.
 
I might just have to give this one a go... It's got some real nice tracks and could be some fun, even though I wasn't really a fan of the way the AI was in RIDE 3...
 
If it is as difficult to ride as Ride 4, then thanks, but no, thanks. Riding a bicycle and a motorbike is easy and intuitive. Yet, somehow Milestone has made the game series so difficult to ride that even 1 single lap on Nordschleife without crash can be celebrated as a mark of enormous effort in the vein of climbing K2 without oxygen.
 
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Biker (or rather now former biker) writing here.

Not that much into MC games, raced them more frequently round the Millenium.

I think it's down to keyboard-riding them back then had a better sense of immersion down to handling than modern day MC games (but as a former IRL MC rider I just grab them on the market anyway, nomatter if I end up playing them or not - yes the stupid curious simmer here using 10 times more in the sim budget on sim software than sim hardware - could have built my own trustworthy MC rig for those money).

Though remember racing an MC game ~15 years ago (don't remember title, sorry) with my former FFB wheel set at ~110° rotation working reasonable, this by using my variable input sidepads on my Thrustmaster Guillemotte Ferrari FFB wheel for gas/brake and clutch pedal for gear shiftning with a nice feed-in opportunity for precise and effective engine braking (and some months ago watched a YT vid from Jake/GPLaps using almost identical hardware mappings, just with modern DD wheel including variable input pads).

Haven't yet quite still catched that much up on Ride 4 more than maybe 5-6 hours after acquiring some 1½ year ago - and same goes for my TT IoM bought now +5 years ago - but first impression is that helmet cam riding MC's in Ride 4 is in fact not that bad, just using keyboard input.

And as a MC rider since 1990 I'm not one of those grumpy simmers needing to state that this has nothing to do with reality, and that 4-18 wheelers do much better in sim immersion.

To me the immersion is as much what happens between the ears and behind the eyes, and Ride 4 + TT IoM has done fine jobs here, just to my sparse experience of maybe 12 hours in all distributed between the two games.

But...speaking immersion. VR opportunities for several MC games are severely missed :(

Which is remarkable realizing it's within this field where VR really will do a difference speaking immersion - especially with speed-induced blur effect and helmet cam shaking and getting it all working properly in VR.

But I'll probably (most probably) grab out for Ride 5, too. Just for the jurney ;)
 
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We don't need more motorcycle sims...we need proper motorcycle cycle sim hardware. I just can't enjoy any game that calls itself a sim with a controller
bars.jpg

I have these bars, and they are excellent, I actually get sweaty as it's quite physical! I rode bikes for over a decade in my youth and this brought it all back....albeit with having to adjust to the individual games physics....Milestone games tend to have excessive understeer and lethargic turning.
 
A couple questions:

Does the endurance racing have rider swap, with an AI rider I guess?

Is Le Mans the full circuit, Bugatti, or both?

Between this and the new Isle of Man TT game, I'm tempted to jump into motorcycle games.
It's the Bugatti track, I was checking which circuits are in the game. Phillip Island, Vallelunga, Macau and 2 fictional tracks aren't, but the season pass promises 6 circuits...
 
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Club Staff
Premium
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I have these bars, and they are excellent, I actually get sweaty as it's quite physical! I rode bikes for over a decade in my youth and this brought it all back....albeit with having to adjust to the individual games physics....Milestone games tend to have excessive understeer and lethargic turning.
Love it! You make it yourself? I've got plenty of spares and it's got me thinking I might have a new project in the pipeline....
 
Refunded it. I might give it another go after a dozen updates and DLCs and of course a nice discount, but for now it's nothing more than Ride 4 with less content. Hell Ride 4 might just even feel better than this.
They have the motorcycle racing genre monopoly for like 20 years and they still haven't managed to make something GOOD.
 
Refunded it. I might give it another go after a dozen updates and DLCs and of course a nice discount, but for now it's nothing more than Ride 4 with less content. Hell Ride 4 might just even feel better than this.
They have the motorcycle racing genre monopoly for like 20 years and they still haven't managed to make something GOOD.
We had GP500 in 1998, it was state of the art physics and graphics, but back in a era when tyre models were incredibly primitive.
 
What ruins these games for me is probably 50% the game's physics and 50% the control method. In real life you can't be jerky, it's actual quite hard to approximate anything as jerky as the games allow even if you deliberately tried on a real motorbike. You just don't have the terrible throttle and brake control that a controller makes quite easy. I always find Ride games too understeery as well.
 
What ruins these games for me is probably 50% the game's physics and 50% the control method. In real life you can't be jerky, it's actual quite hard to approximate anything as jerky as the games allow even if you deliberately tried on a real motorbike. You just don't have the terrible throttle and brake control that a controller makes quite easy. I always find Ride games too understeery as well.
I agree and think under all circumstances the essential gyroeffect taken in use on a real bike for precise negotiation of corner handling cannot be transferred to digital inputs as gamepads or keyboard riding, but should be doable for sim developers when setting up for variable input as FFB Wheel or excellent self-made MC handle bars.

Nevertheless, as a former MC rider myself I'm to some extent still entertained playing those games, taking them for what they are:
Games you 'play' and not core sims you 'race'/'ride'...
 
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We don't need more motorcycle sims...we need proper motorcycle cycle sim hardware. I just can't enjoy any game that calls itself a sim with a controller
Speak for yourself. Just because you don’t like using a controller, doesn’t mean others can’t get on with it.

I’m more than happy to see more bike sims out there.
If it is as difficult to ride as Ride 4, then thanks, but no, thanks. Riding a bicycle and a motorbike is easy and intuitive. Yet, somehow Milestone has made the game series so difficult to ride that even 1 single lap on Nordschleife without crash can be celebrated as a mark of enormous effort in the vein of climbing K2 without oxygen.
You’re complaining about taking on the longest and most difficult circuit out there.

It’s never going to be perfect. Ride 4 isn’t particularly hard. Perhaps try it on a somewhat easier circuit, eh?
 

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