I’ve been fairly cynical about motorcycle video games for a while now. Well, video games in general, but that’s another story. The Ride franchise has always been technically respectable – creators Milestone clearly know their stuff – but somewhere along the way the series started feeling like annual ‘Bold New Graphics!’ updates. So when I sat down with Ride 6, I wasn’t expecting to lose a weekend to it. I did.
Let’s start where it matters. Ride 6 launches with nearly 280 motorcycles across seven categories, expanding beyond 340 with DLC content. Sportsbikes, nakeds, scooters, endurance bikes, classics, baggers and — for the first time in the franchise’s history — Maxi Enduro (adventure bikes). We’ll come back to that.
The manufacturers represented here are aplenty. Aprilia, BMW, Ducati, Honda, Kawasaki, Norton, Suzuki, Triumph, KTM, Yamaha, MV Agusta, Moto Guzzi and plenty more. The classic race bike selection is particularly special — 500cc two-stroke GP machines are present and accounted for, and flicking through the virtual showroom feels less like scrolling a game menu and more like thumbing through forty years of bike magazines.
The models themselves are extraordinary. Milestone have clearly worked closely with manufacturers to nail every detail, and it shows. I spent an embarrassing amount of time just rotating bikes in the garage, zooming in on panel gaps and brake caliper geometry.
According to Milestone, they work through a formal licensing and reference process with each brand before a single polygon is placed.
Some of you may know, my current real-life bike is an Aprilia Tuareg 660, and I was stoked to see it included in the game. They nailed it. The visual accuracy is spotless, but the exhaust note is close enough for jazz, as they say. It’s not perfect, but for the first time in a motorcycle game I’ve genuinely had a moment of oh, that sounds familiar.
You’ll hear the difference between a parallel-twin, a triple, a boxer and a V4 — and while sounds are still a long way from capturing the full theatre of an actual motorcycle, they’ve come a fair distance.
The same care extends to the BMW R 1300 GS, the Ducati DesertX Rally and the KTM 890 Adventure, all of which make appearances in the new Maxi Enduro category.
The introduction of dedicated off-road tracks is genuinely significant. Ride has always been a road and circuit game, so asking Milestone’s physics team to suddenly model dirt, gravel and variable traction in the same package as race-spec superbikes was no small ask.
The result is serviceable for a first crack. Adventure bike physics feel appropriately heavy and deliberate — there’s that sense of mass you expect from machines like the GS or the 1390 Adventure.
My gripe is that the physicality is slightly over-done. Also, real adventure bike riding involves a lot of time standing on your pegs, and Ride 6 keeps the rider inexplicably planted in the seat throughout. It ends up feeling a bit heavy-supermotard-ish rather than genuinely adventure bike.
But look, first attempt at something fundamentally new in a long-running franchise, and it works. I’ll take that.
The 39 launch tracks (expanding to 45 with post-launch DLC) strike a genuinely pleasing balance between hyper-realistic venues and the kind of fantastical exaggerated vistas that make racing games feel like racing games rather than simulations.
On the serious end: Almeria, Suzuka and Daytona International Speedway are all present and correct. The Nürburgring Nordschleife is here too, which is always welcome. The ‘Ring in any racing game is a gift that keeps giving. But the highlight for me is the North West 200. Having one of road racing’s great circuits in a game of this calibre is genuinely exciting, and I hope it signals more real-world road courses in future updates.
On the spectacular end, locations like Kapadokya (Turkey) and Mount Gunma in Japan bring genuine visual drama that you simply don’t get from another lap of a familiar paddock.
Ride 6 introduces an Arcade physics mode, and it’s a smart move. Previous entries in the franchise required you to essentially know how a motorcycle works to get anywhere near it, which is great for us, but shuts the door on casual players who just want to race around Daytona on a Panigale without a physics degree.
Arcade mode opens the game up considerably. With simulation settings enabled, though, this is still a steep climb. Real motorcycle dynamics: weight transfer, trail braking, throttle management mid-corner, all of it matters, and the game will punish you for not understanding it. That’s a feature, not a bug, for this audience.
Ride 6 introduces something it calls RIDE Fest, a festival-style hub world that you’ll recognise the DNA of immediately if you’ve played Forza Horizon. The idea is sound: a celebratory, atmospheric space that captures the culture and community of motorcycling as well as the racing.
The execution falls short of that ambition. The hub feels like scaffolding around a great game rather than a fully realised world. It doesn’t demonstrate real motorcycling culture in any meaningful sense. There’s nothing here that would make a non-rider feel the pull of the lifestyle. What you get instead is a functional menu dressed in festival clothing. That’s fine, but it could be so much more.
The ten legendary champion heroes – Tyler O’Hara and, crucially for us Australians, Casey Stoner – are a genuinely engaging addition to the career structure. Having Stoner in the game kept me pressing forward through campaign missions that might otherwise have lost me. That’s smart game design.
Character customisation is fairly thin. You’ll find a decent range of gear from quality manufacturers and there’s good representation of the brands you’d actually wear, but the depth of personalisation is limited.
If you’re going to fit an Akrapovic exhaust, it’ll look like an Akrapovic exhaust. Custom livery changes did have a loading bug at launch that caused them to fail in some instances which was a minor irritation rather than a game-breaker, and exactly the kind of thing that gets patched.
At roughly $100 AUD depending on your platform, you’d expect a game to give you your money’s worth without then trying to bleed you further. Ride 6 largely delivers on this. Milestone have shown genuine restraint with microtransactions as bikes and modifications can all be purchased with in-game currency, and the progression doesn’t force you into a grind.
In the current landscape, where a $100 game with an aggressive microtransaction model is practically standard practice, this is worth acknowledging.
Carl Cox has composed the flagship track and curated a three-hour playlist for Ride 6. For my taste, and with all the respect in the world to Carl, the in-menu music feels a bit homogenous modern racing-game to me. I guess I miss the punk rock of older motocross titles.
Ride 6 is the best entry in this franchise. It builds meaningfully on what Milestone have always done well – extraordinary bike models, authentic physics, a roster that’ll make real riders genuinely happy – and adds new dimensions in the Maxi Enduro category and off-road tracks that, while imperfect, represent genuine growth.
If you ride motorcycles and you own a console, Ride 6 deserves your $100. And if you own one of the bikes that are in the game, you’ll spend the first hour doing absolutely no racing whatsoever.
Ride 6 is available now on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S and PC via Steam and the Epic Games Store.
Editorial Director at infomoto.com.au. Loves Rally bikes.