Welcome to our review of Ride 4, a gorgeous racing game that is more pretty than fun.
Are you ready to live the best gaming experience that a motorcycle fan can get?
RIDE 4 will spark your competitive soul with hundreds of bikes, dozens of tracks and a whole new level of realism.
Choose among hundreds of officially licensed bikes and ride on dozens of tracks all around the world, carefully designed with an extraordinary level of detail! Every asset has been created starting from CAD data, laser and 3D scanning to achieve precision down to the smallest detail and let you enjoy the best two-wheel racing experience ever. Jump into an amazing and dynamic adventure that interacts with your decisions and choose your own path from the regional events up to the professional leagues. Show your riding skills through challenging races, ability tests, track days and a huge set of events. You could even become an official tester for the most celebrated manufacturers!
RIDE 4 features a fully dynamic weather conditions system and a complete day/night cycle. Experience the race in a new light and prove you are the best rider in any condition. And for the first time, the “Endurance” mode will put your tenacity to the test, with animated pit-stops and long-lasting races: prepare to face a world where strategy is the ultimate ingredient of your success! Let us introduce you to A.N.N.A. (Artificial Neural Network Agent), our revolutionary neural AI system based on machine learning. Race against faster, smarter, more accurate riders and compete with an AI more human than ever!
Race with your own style! Choose among plenty of official brands for your rider’s outfit and customize your bikes aesthetically and mechanically. Unleash your creativity and design your helmet, suit and bike livery in total freedom thanks to our new graphics editor. Once you’re done, share your creations online or just discover the best designs of the community! Enjoy the most complete and lag-free online multiplayer experience ever thanks to our dedicated servers.
Ride 4 looks the part but damn, it is one piece of hard to master software. I admit to not being great at racing games, if not for review purposes, I would not buy a single one of them aside from my collecting habits (read my desire to own full sets). Ride 4 excels greatly in being a technical racer and that is where a casual gamer like myself is not the target audience and I wanted to delete the downloaded game even before I was able to finish the tutorial.
Ah, the tutorial… Probably the worst approach to a game that I have ever seen in my life. Can not skip it, can not get any clues or guidance, everytime you go out of bounds, you get suckered into invalid laps and at certain points even the next lap being deemed invalid already. The frustration I had, I can not even describe it but if asked to anyway…. pure hatred. I hated everything about the tutorial and ESPECIALLY not being able to skip it. What is wrong with the developers making that decision?
Once I finally got through the tutorial, I was around half an hour into the game, and aside from enjoying the occasional crash now and then, I had experienced not a single moment of fun. That is saying a lot, but again, technical racers are intended for true fans of the genre, not casual gamers like myself.
After the entire debacle of the tutorial, I got to admit I did not want to continue much. I had had it with this game and if this would have been a purchased game, I would have been returning it at the spot. But I like to take my job as a reviewer more seriously so I did try out most of the modes. Still sucking very hard at the actual driving, I was more enamored by its amazing graphics and a really fun feature I had thanks to my PS5…
The shoulder button reacts perfectly to the throttle. I know this is how the new DualSense is supposed to work, but it sure is nice to see a game other than Astro have this incorporated so well. It really did add a new dimension to the game and despite strongly disliking the game personally, I can see clearly that technical drivers will thoroughly enjoy this game.
In conclusion, Ride 4 excels at some parts but it sure failed for me personally. Great graphics and a cool DualSense incorporation did not save it from grace for me.
