REVIEW – This game is 95% the same as last year’s first installment. I know, it’s not the usual start, but in the case of Milestone, you can expect what you get even before the release of their games. It’s like a sports game with the very minimum of improvement each year.

First thought: wow, it doesn’t take a year to load the game. Okay, the Italians were expected to acknowledge the horrible loading times and not make us wait a minute to get to the menu. The other expectation was that the save files should not be screwed over simply because Milestone messes up the autosave system. These were fixed.

16 seasons of boring riding

RIDE had no story, and the sequel has none either. In fact, you get a must-do race after the character creation (insert heavy quotes here) before your career launches. Oh yeah, the character creation: you can’t even choose your profile picture in this game! Here’s to some more devolution from Milestone!

If you’re done with this race, you end up in the menu to start building your reputation. Unfortunately, this is the same system that the first RIDE game had: you are #300 on the list, and your aim is to reach the top. The other 299 characters? They are just names with numbers. Zero confrontation with them off the track. It’s as lifeless as 1998’s Viper Racing was, but that game is at least fun to play even nowadays on PC.

The career has some invitational events that you can attend at the end of each season (one season = eight races), and there’re some team races too. The four main categories have three difficulty levels from amateur to rookie to expert, and they all have subcategories with multiple races. Most of your 128 races of the career will be spent on these events.

Ride to hell

…or to some official race tracks, such as the Nürburgring, which even got its Nordschleife iteration, or to some street courses, most of which was lifted over from RIDE. There are multiple types of bikes, such as supermoto, naked, superbike, or supersport, and there are 177 bikes total. If you want to max all of them out, first off, you’re crazy, and second, it will cost about eh… roughly seven million credits.

I previously mentioned the team races – there are four riders on each team and the one with the most points (higher position equals more points) wins. You can hire higher skilled riders for tokens, and those tokens will cost you a fortune. You can also spend them on funny perks, such as having double votes in online events, or the fact that you can start from pole position, because otherwise, you launch from the midfield. Brilliant!

PP

Bikes are categorized by PP, Performance Points as well. There are races with say, a 350 limit. You can max your bike out, and end up seeing your rivals pull away from you, as your maxed out set of wheels has only 245 PP. There’s a lack of balance here, and it’s really annoying to make you spend money on other bikes just to keep up with the AI.

Because of it, you must grind a lot, which means more races, making the gameplay boring in no time. I just brought up the biggest issue of the game: it’s not a Gran Turismo, or a Tourist Trophy, just to bring up a bike game such as this on PlayStation platforms. Despite Milestone’s usual riding aids from ABS to perfect line and rewind function, the game is simply boring. Not even the time trail, perfect trajectory or overtake races help RIDE 2.

Not recommended

The first RIDE got a 59/100 last year. This year, it’s a 60/100, and that single point is just for the smaller loading times and the normal saving function. In return, the menu is slow as molasses, it takes seconds to navigate from one point to another, and the bike tuning option doesn’t have a single “buy this pack to max out your ride” option, and half of the manufacturers are from Italy, too… ah, definitely not preferring the local makers, nope.RIDE 2 is only recommended for like 15-20 bucks, just as the Rossi game. It’s an overpriced, outdated simcade with boring music and subpar audio. Milestone should get their shit together.

-V-

Publisher: Milestone

Developer: Milestone

Genre: Simcade bike racing

Release date: October 7, 2016