Ride 5 Review: One for the purists

Round 5 it’s the latest in Milestone’s first motorcycle racing series to run exclusively on current generation hardware, and it looks and runs even better. It makes relatively few new additions to the established formula, however, save for improvements to the dynamic weather system, a few more bikes, and split-screen racing. It’s a title created primarily for racing enthusiasts, for better or for worse.

While some of the the best racing games they blur the fine line between realistic simulation handling and arcade action, Round 5 firmly establishes itself in the previous camp inflexibly and uncompromisingly. You are thrown into the deep end right from the start
– just like the 2020 predecessor Round 4 – and has to complete a few time trial laps before committing to the rest of the title’s content. However, unlike the older game, there is no strict insistence on personal best time or the risk of an invalid lap for the slightest mistake, but this is as slow as the game allows you.

And why Round 5 he’s not interested in teaching you how to play with his sink-or-swim mentality. There’s no tutorial mode to speak of, nor a detailed walkthrough on how to best use the game’s systems to learn as you go. There’s a track, a couple of laps that need to be done, and you have to do your best to wrestle with the controls from the start and fight your way through the steep learning curve to even have a chance to race other people. However, it’s more of a wall to climb than a curve to progress along. The bikes feel heavy and responsive under acceleration, although turning and braking properly before corners takes some getting used to. Even though I played this series a lot, I still had problems with the foundations and can only imagine that they are completely unapproachable and uninviting to newcomers.

The Grand Tour

Once you get up to speed with the fundamentals of Round 5, you will have to go through the long career mode, divided into four main chapters with different difficulties. You start with a basic 250cc 2-stroke motorcycle, the slowest in the professional racing world, with top speeds reaching around 80mph / 128km/h before moving up to much more powerful 600cc sports and supersport bikes that they can easily reach 160mph / 257kmh. Before long, if you’re good enough, you’ll be pitting your money against some of the best in the division on 1000cc bikes in some of the tightest corners ever seen.

There are loads of bikes to unlock as you work your way through the career mode as each of the four segments awards dozens of bikes, usually between 20 and 30, which is the main reason to keep going. You can also unlock unique bikes, including the stellar 1996 Kawasaki Ninja ZX-7RR and the 2001 Honda VTR1000 SP1-EM model, which are sure to be highly coveted by longtime riders and racing enthusiasts.

The great charm of Round 5 is the look, sound and feel of these real and beautiful motorcycle models. From the garage you have a total of 233 motorcycles from 14 of the largest manufacturers in the world such as Honda, Kawasaki, Aprilia, KTM, Suzuki and Triumph. Without a doubt, this is the best looking motorcycle title ever made and the leap towards releasing exclusively on PS5, Xbox Series Xand PC has consolidated all of that, as there’s a level of photorealism that simply couldn’t have been achieved with the previous generation of consoles.

This also extends to the sound of vehicles. One of the first things I did in the game was to lend out the Kawasaki Ninja ZX-6R, a 636cc sportbike, and a game version of the vehicle I passed the bike test on several years ago. Putting the camera in first person helmet mode, hearing the roar of the liquid-cooled inline four-cylinder engine, it was that bike and it sounded just like when I was behind the controls, it’s very impressive. The immersion starts to break down, however, when you factor in the actual ride Round 5 because cornering is demanding, even when you shift down a few gears, you brake before the corner and then accelerate out of the corner. It’s much easier to do this in real life on the same high-speed bike than in the game, where I felt like I was constantly grappling with the controls.

It’s a shame that the same level of detail doesn’t extend to the tracks you’ll be racing on. There is a total of four continents to choose from, divided into three categories; America, Europe and Asia-Africa implementing real world locations such as Sonoma Raceway, Donington Park Raceway and Sportsland Gravy just to name a few. While the tracks look good, and that’s the main focus, pedestrian spectators appear poorly rendered, and asset pop-in is a frequent occurrence due to foliage and other set dressing. Sometimes things can look really photo-realistic, but the illusion can be broken if you stare too closely at small details.

Rash

It doesn’t help matters for the racing experience Round 5 it is the artificial intelligence of the rival pilot who constantly comes on the hunt for blood even when in the tamer’s troubles. It’s not uncommon to see other drivers collide regularly on straight sections of the track as well, but it often happens in the corners. However, it gets even more frustrating when you’re often rear-ended or rear-ended by drivers who have little regard for their own safety and care even less about you. In the races I took part in it was not uncommon for me to have many penalty seconds added because I was thrown off the bike by people who had no right to collide with me. The experience is more frustrating than not, as real motorcycle racing isn’t conducted that way. While it’s true that you can turn off collisions and tweak the driver AI settings to your liking, setting all the settings quieter just to get through a race isn’t fun, or the correct solution here.

The previous title Round 4 received an update for PS5 and Xbox Series X that added DualSense functionality and this is something that has carried over into this title. It’s an incredibly immersive touch and one of the best uses of the PS5 controller I’ve ever seen. The adaptive triggers provide a realistic and powerful punch to everything from braking and accelerating to gear changes and red trim and it feels great. Haptic feedback further confirms this as you’ll be able to feel different terrains as you transition from smooth tracks to roads, to grass and gravel when you inevitably take a corner too sharply or get run off the road. For this reason, in my experience, the PS5 is definitely the ultimate platform.

It’s in the comparison Round 5 to its predecessor that I’m less convinced this iteration really had to exist because the games look functionally identical. Prior to this review, I went back and reviewed Milestone’s latest driver side by side with this one and I really couldn’t tell there was anything different. Yes, this adds a split-screen mode, which is a welcome addition, fleshes out the career mode a bit more, and includes new changes to the dynamic weather system, but that title is available significantly cheaper, and comes with a lot more bikes included for free DLC vs base roster here.

In the end, I’m incredibly conflicted Round 5. There’s no mistaking the visual presentation, sound, and immersion the game delivers on a surface level. It’s without a doubt one of the best-looking PS5 games I’ve ever seen, and a good demonstration of what current-gen hardware can do. But that said, it’s not all that fun to play, as once you get past the steep learning curve, which is likely to put off more than a few curious people, you’ll end up with a title that’s simply not that exciting. action, heavily hampered by AI and handling. If you’re a simulation purist who loves motorcycles, you’ll get a lot out of this, however, if you’re just interested in hitting the track with some bikes you recognize and enjoy, then this is the place to be. it’s not the game for you.

Accessibility

Round 5 it has a couple of decent accessibility options, including fully remappable control layouts for some of the best PS5 controllers. You can also enable driving aids that make the experience easier and include automatic braking, automatic steering and the ability to completely disable collisions. You can also disable various elements of the HUD based on what you need on screen as well.

How we reviewed Ride 5

I spent about 15 hours playing the game Round 5 in single races and going through different stages of the career mode, purchasing and testing a wide variety of different bikes in varying weather conditions. To accurately control the controls, I tested the game with multiple PS5 controllers, one with DualSense support and another that omitted vibration and adaptive triggers entirely.

Ride 5 will look great on one of the best monitors for ps5 or the best monitors for xbox series x.