‘RIDE 4’ Review: The Best Motorbike Game Of 2020, But Not Perfect

'RIDE 4' is out on PC, Xbox One and PS4 on October 8.

Gaming has been great for motorcycle racing fans in 2020. In March, Kylotonn offered up TT Isle of Man–Ride on the Edge 2, which brought death-defying island madness–truly thrilling, but not exactly faultless, terror on two wheels. Soon after, Milestone dropped MotoGP 20, showcasing the highs (and occasional lows) of the world’s foremost bike championship.

On October 8, Milestone returns with RIDE 4: its Gran Turismo-style bike racing experience for Xbox One, PS4, and PC. With it, you get the best motorcycle game of the year, and arguably the finest of this console generation–a bold statement on the face of things, but given how under-served and inconsistent bike games are, the bar isn’t exactly sky-high.

By learning from past mistakes, and building on established strengths from MotoGP 20, RIDE 4 delivers unmatched depth, impressive visuals, a challenging career mode, better AI, and a racing experience like no other. Even though it starts slow–and continues to feel wickedly difficult, especially for newcomers–it has addictive qualities that make the quest for that rare, perfect lap worth all those countless, life-ending crashes.

An unconvincing start

If one thing undermines the RIDE 4 experience, it’s its first impression. You’re immediately tasked with creating your character. Unlike MotoGP 20, RIDE 4 offers an equal number of choices for male and female racers... five faces per gender. I say faces; they’re mostly hidden by an always-on helmet. It’s just as well, because if MotoGP 20 taught us anything about Milestone’s character models, it’s that they look more like Gerry Anderson puppets than real people.

That said, they show enough of the face to let you know you can’t be Asian, even though half a dozen of the game’s circuits take place there. Maybe racial diversity will arrive with the first DLC. But RIDE 4 is as much about the identity of your rider as 95% of car games are about the driver; once you’ve spent five seconds customizing your entirely unremarkable human, you’re thrown onto the immortal Tsukuba circuit for an unskippable non-tutorial.

An initial visit to Tsukuba proves to be a very frustrating experience.

You’re tasked with completing a short, one-minute hot lap to get to grips with the game’s unique physics, controls, and handling. Aside from the racing line and braking zone marker on the track, which are frustratingly inaccurate, you’re given no other guidance. As soon as you leave the track–and I guarantee you will, on the first corner–your lap’s invalid and you have to go again. It soon becomes clear that rampant understeer underpins the RIDE 4 experience, and it’s something you’ll simply have to get used to.

You’re forced to keep riding until you’ve completed a fault-free circuit; only then are you deemed worthy of the rest of the game. It’s a blessing as well as a curse, because you’d be completely wrong to think RIDE 4 is a pick-up-and-play experience–this short trial sets early expectations. Once you get it out of the way, the curtain raises, revealing just how much RIDE 4 has in its tank.

Meat on the bones

While the game funnels you straight into its career mode, a quick detour to the main menu soon uncovers just how much there is to enjoy. Between its 176 officially licensed bikes spanning over 50 years, its two-dozen international circuits in Europe, Asia and the Americas (both real and created), and an incredible wealth of customization options available on both mechanical and cosmetic levels, it’s hard to know what else it could provide to even the most obsessive bike fan.

Chances are you'll most definitely find your favorite ride in RIDE 4.

RIDE 4’s incredible editing mode really sets it apart from the competition, even if it’s initially limited to your own collection of machines and outfits. Its intuitive suite of tools allows you to customize and edit your entire bike livery, design your helmet and suit, and create stickers. User-generated content is also downloadable and shareable. While it reuses a lot of MotoGP 20’s mechanics, it doesn’t share its predecessor’s limitations, which were presumably held back by licensing issues.

Milestone has clearly put a lot of effort into upgrading the look and feel of the game, and it shows, particularly on the bike models, which you could gaze at for days in their respective stores. Once you’re actually riding them, you really do feel their power and weight, especially down long straights, or at the center of the pack, jostling for position. However, it’s here where the game starts to lose its polish.

Trouble on the track

In another grateful change since MotoGP 20, Milestone’s heavily promoted AI system–ANNA–makes on-track competition a lot less suicidal, at the expense of responsiveness. While you can clearly see the rest of the field strategizing around you, other riders struggle to react to delicate moves and more aggressive overtaking tactics, meaning their somewhat robotic unresponsiveness can lead to inevitable pile-ups in the early stages of each race.

The AI is an improvement... to a degree.

It doesn’t help that the ragdoll and crash physics are so cartoonish, reminiscent of the long jump minigame from Trials HD, but without the humor. Yet it’s not the AI’s fault for crashing, most of the time; you’ll usually catapult off your bike because of that ever-frustrating understeer. Even grazing a barrier sees you being punted into the stands; as soon as you fall, you rarely recover, because it’s often impossible to find your rhythm again.

Racing isn’t the only element of the game; in career mode, an introductory choice of three leagues (Europe, Asia, and America) opens out to the World League, which also forces time trials on you–that aforementioned “invalid lap” mechanic from the introductory section is so punishing that you learn to loathe the endless restarts brought about by the smallest mistakes. It’s something Milestone really needs to tweak along the line.

Yet for its punishing mechanics, getting those occasional wins and gold times is ridiculously rewarding. You just keep coming back.

For all its problems and occasional lack of polish, the greatest compliment that can be paid to RIDE 4 is that it feels like a truly premium product–a racing game that deserves its $50 price tag. The fact it’ll get a free upgrade for PS5 and Xbox Series X owners in January 2021 only adds long-term value, especially given how good it looks already.

I started 2020 without ever truly enjoying a motorcycle racing game, because they always felt like an afterthought when compared to car-racing titles. TT Isle of Man 2 and MotoGP certainly laid the foundations for a new interest, but it’s RIDE 4 that’s finally converted me to gaming on two wheels.

Admittedly, a lot of this is to do with those Gran Turismo vibes. Most of the reason I loved the classic PlayStation series was for the off-track activities, and I often grimaced at the thought of doing the A License, or another Sunday Cup for a Mazda Demio, as a means to an end. RIDE 4 makes you learn–the hard way, just like old times–that punishing risk leads to wonderful rewards, even if those rewards are just pretty things to buy, paint and stare at.

Disclaimer: I was provided with a copy of RIDE 4 in exchange for a fair and honest review.