Ride 6 Review [XSX/S, PS5 & PC]

I have been playing motorcycle racing games my whole life. Everything from Excitebike on the NES to trying to conquer the absolutely unforgiving simulator "GP Bikes" on PC. I've been playing Milestone's own motorcycle racing games all the way back to SBK 2001 and Super-Bikes Riding Challenge and then every single year since they took over the MotoGP-license. "Just" 11 years ago Milestone launched the Ride-game series that finally made a game with street bikes with simcade-physics that we've been missing since Tourist Trophy never got a successor. Now it's 2026 and it's time for the 6th installment of the series with the brand new Ride 6 game with over 340 bikes, 45 tracks, 7 bike categories with the brand new addition of baggers and offroad bikes that we're ready to dive into!

When launching this game you create your character and then you're greeted into the "Ride Fest" motorcycle festival for the first time ever in the series, that acts both as the main new feature of the game's career mode, but also as the main menu. You have probably seen this concept before in the huge Forza Horizon franchise, but without the free-roam experience. From the main menu you can choose whether to start your journey in the career mode, or jump straight into online multiplayer, Bridgestone Riding School or go make custom liveries, suits, helmets, stickers in the Editor. 

Ride 6 aims at letting everyone join in on the fun, so it will suit both new and experienced players with the Arcade and Pro physics options.

Arcade is set to for an approachable experience tailored for everyone. The complexities of the bike and the riding experience has been simplified, making it easier for players unfamiliar with motorcycles and videogames. While Pro is made to give players who seek realism and challenge an exceptional level of simulation, with modular physics to adapt the complexity for the best experience. If you just got off Ride 5 and started playing Ride 6, you will definitely feel the difference right away between Pro from Ride 5 and Ride 6. Pro in Ride 6 is much more precise and smooth, where you really need have your inputs on the sticks timed perfectly. You make far more mistakes if you don't focus and learn the tracks 100%. Adjusting TCS, ABS, EB and PWR will also affect how the bike behaves that you can adjust on the fly with the D-pad. A really good advice is to turn off racing line indicators once you've ridden all the tracks a few times. You often think the game tells you the fastest way around the track with these, but you're basically going to be very far off if you check the leaderboards. I would say that the brake markers are the only thing you benefit from having it turned on, but other than that: turn it off as fast as you can and feel comfortable!

Career mode is like every other racing career mode: Start from the bottom and work your way to the end by beating every race and challenge along the way! Variation is not so common during the whole career mode (yes, I've almost played every single race so far...) You often ride on the same tracks and rain is often more present than sunshine which gets kind of annoying. Going into Time Trial or Multiplayer really makes you see that you're missing out on some great tracks that you could enjoy in the Career Mode. Some tracks doesn't even show up at all during the entire timeline.

New to this game though is that it now features real riders, that act as your Career "Bosses". The real riders are the following:

Troy Bayliss, Guy Martin, Casey Stoner, Tyler O'Hara, Thomas Chareyre, Niccoló Canepa, Peter Hickman, Skyler Howes, Ian Hutchinson & James Toseland

During your career progression you will face off with these riders in their respective field of motorcycle racing. You'll try and beat Tyler O'Hara in the baggers category and Skyler Howes in the offroad category for the first time ever for both types of bikes in the Ride-series. When you beat any of these 10 riders, you will unlock their signature bike that can be used both in the career mode but also online. I was never a big fan of CS27, so it felt really great to beat him effortlessly and grab his Desmosedici RR!

Speaking of difficulty. In the Career Mode you will experience difficulty like never before. Some session you're 2-3 seconds faster and the next race you're 2-3 seconds off from the pace in qualifying, then back again to being 2-3 seconds faster in the race again which makes some challenges impossible to beat. Usually this was due to the face that you didn't upgrade your bike with performance parts, but even after doing this, you see no change in gaining in on your opponents on the lap times. This is something that has been discussed in forums that really needs to be adjusted, because right now it's really unbalanced. 

Jumping online to the multiplayer is where we spend most of the time on these games. Once we have the Race Modified bikes, this is where you will find us on the evenings during the weeks! Multiplayer is pretty much the same from the last games with 1-12 players that you can challenge. There is no ranking system, so you can end up in a lobby with anything from beginners to the absolute top riders in the world. If you want to just play with your friends, you can setup a lobby and invite them via the Epic Games service, close the lobby for everyone and it doesn't matter which platform you're on since crossplay is of course enabled in this game.

Ride 6 offers new realistic and fictional tracks that has gotten a small, but noticable, boost with the Unreal Engine 5.6 graphics engine. You can experience day/night cycle, but also changes in the weather can go from strong sunshine to pouring rain mid-race. There's no need for a tire change if that happens as the traction remains the same, which means you don't have to plan your pit stops during Endurance-races for example which takes the whole meaning away. But riding an Endurance-race at Suzuka by night in the rain will always going to be special!

Riding in these environments is also accompanied by engine sounds of course. As a hardcore motorcycle rider in real life, the sound has always been a crucial part of video games and often something that developers tend to not quite the feeling off. Some bikes in these games sounds great, while others are so horrible that you actually turn the volume down on your TV or sound system.

Verdict

Ride 6 promises a lot on the surface, but it doesn't really give you that much when you break it down. Sure, Baggers and Offroad Enduro is a nice addition to maybe bring in new riders to the franchise, or attract current riders to maybe try them out in real life, but other than that it's just an update to the main menu, HUD and physics. 

If you don't play a lot of multiplayer or much in general I would wait for a sales weekend to occur before buying, but if you're a hardcore motorcycle racing gamer it should definitely already be in your game library. Right now it's missing most of the promised 340 bikes and 45 tracks that will be added during different season DLC's. But for online racing, the bikes you really need, are already included.

It's a great game overall and we as motorcycle riders should be really thankful that we can get a game like this to the current gen consoles and PC with this kind of depth built into it. For Ride 7 we really hope we can ride out from the Ridefest and into an open world MMO racing game. If we ever get there, I think they will strip out the "7" and start over with a completely new Ride-franchise!

Now we wait for MotoGP 26 that launches on 29th April!

+ New physics feels great

- Engine sound is great some times, but more often unbearable

7/10


If you want to race with us in the evenings, join our discord: https://discord.gg/tXaKMyPkD