Ride

If there's something Italian development studio Milestone don't lack, it's passion. The team's attempted to channel that along with all the experience gained from creating the likes of SBK Generations, MotoGP 14 and SBK 2011: Superbike World Championship into an experience that's not dissimilar from Gran Turismo. A focus on the two-wheeled racing, tuning and styling. The intent is to inspire riding fanatics and mesmerise the uninitiated.

Ride's Career mode is laid out just like Gran Turismo. It's about starting from scratch and aiming for the stars. Begin with a number of dull races and tired bikes to win prize money, cash that in for upgrades, work up the rankings and take on increasingly fast opponents.

The driving setup has been tailored to allow Milestone the ability to emulate multiple bike behaviours, and there's satisfaction in the likes of leaning forward and down with the upper body, and letting the throttle out as the knee caresses the inside bend of a tight corner and pulling out the other side. The passion for the ride is never clearer than here: you can tell Milestone love road racing.

However, there's a lot of other areas where they haven't been successful. One of these issues are the long loading times. It's been a while since we we squirmed uncomfortably at having to reload a race, knowing the wait we were in for, or sighed in the knowledge that jumping between different menus as we wanted to replace a tyre or other motorcycle part would mean long wait times as things loaded.

Worse is the double load times that arise before every race. After choosing our ride, we're put on hold staring at a motorcycle model with some info text beside it. After 40 seconds or so, we get a button prompt. Tap, and another download starts, and we're left with the same static screen. It feels like we've stared far longer at loading screens than we have road a motorcycle in this game. Ride requires patience. Oodles of it. It destroys part of the experience.

The tracks and environments equally don't impress. The surroundings look like they've been lifted from a PS3 game, and while bikes and riders look better, with the Emotion FX tech making rider animations (coupled with the great bike physics) look spot on, it'd be hard to call Ride visually lush. At least with those animations, the game manages to look 100% realistic, something that can't be said of almost every other motorcycle title we've tested over the past 15 years.

There's a rather daft amount of texture-pop, which is a bigger problem with the online competitions but also experienced in single player Career, and something that simply shouldn't be an issue on the PS4. Maybe it's time the team look to jumping on board with CryEngine or Unreal 4.

To throw yourself round a growling sports bike in Ride is really fun. The helmet camera works superbly, and the balance between torque and top speed is acceptable, plus the dynamics of how the tire physics works in concert with the system's gravity is satisfactory.

The problem, the same one that destroyed the past few Gran Turismo and drops the score, is the dry and lifeless presentation, a generic voiceover, awful loading times and poor music. If Milestone can keep the racing physics intact but renovate all the other elements, then maybe a potential sequel could be fulfil the wish of biking enthusiasts.