Ride 4 game review: show vs substance

If you are looking at jumping into a motorcycle racing game you aren’t particularly spoiled for choice but there are certainly more options on the market than five years ago. Ride 4 differentiates itself with a sim-like experience at the forefront of the game’s approach.

Ride 4’s focus on realism is paired with fidelity and level of detail that elevates its visuals above any of the competition; the game is unquestionably very pretty. So much emphasis has gone into the looks of the bikes in particular that you can see brake fluid bounce around and wobble in its reservoir in first-person view with each corner. Each bike has been 3D scanned by the team at Milestone and it certainly shows with a level of depth and aesthetic appeal many racing games fall well short of.

This is not a pick-up-and-play kind of game like your other arcade racers though. Ride will demand you first acclimatise to the bike and then not push it very far beyond its boundaries.

The riding experience itself will be a varying one, depending on three things: your persistence, level of patience and experience with motorcycle games. If you picked up a controller expecting to wrestle the bikes under your control then get ready to watch as your rider ragdolls into the gravel trap in a cartoonishly-animated style.

Similar to the developer’s MotoGP 20 title from earlier this year, the experience will depend on the player’s willingness to stay with it as it offers no real helping hand to newcomers, but experienced players will certainly be catered to.

Frustration will definitely arise from the unsympathetic track limits system. The first taste of riding comes almost immediately after pressing the start button and I found myself having several laps chalked off due to touching the white line on the edge of the track surface rather than riding over it onto astroturf. Even clipping the apexes at the wrong angles sometimes gave an invalidated lap time.

It is something of a harsh ‘tutorial’ and maybe it’s kind to call it that. Dumped right into a time trial race around an unfamiliar circuit can be daunting already, but you basically have to figure things out from there yourself, playing with lines and corner-entry speeds, assists and the inconsistent track limit system. It will certainly appeal to one type of player, but will be an immediate barrier for many other more casual players.

The career begins with you selecting either the European, Asian or American league and you progress by completing challenges in each mini-series within. The majority of the challenges facing you though are simple timed events, racing against the stopwatch rather than any AI opponents, with time attacks and overtake challenges very infrequent in comparison. It can lead to a bit of a dreary experience and fatigue of having to race on the same circuits multiple times in mini sections without much variation in goals to complete. From the initial leagues, you’ll progress to the world league before the final stage that splits into endurance or superbikes.

One hugely frustrating factor arising from this format is the decision to have a mini cutscene playout after failing any challenge. For instance, say you are tasked with riding a lap of the Nurburgring GP circuit to achieve as fast a time as possible and run wide at the final chicane, cut over the astroturf and your time is invalidated, You cannot ride around to begin another lap.