Ride 5 Special Edition

The wet-weather riding is the best thing in here, and I say that as someone who normally switches rain off before the first green light. Water gathers in the racing line, spray hangs off the bike in front, and a machine that felt planted two laps ago starts asking permission before every corner. Milestone put RIDE 5 out in August 2023 as the latest chapter in their long-running bike series, and the dynamic weather is where the extra development time actually shows up on screen. This is a motorcycle sim first, a sports game second, and a party game not at all, which is worth knowing before you invite people over expecting a kart racer with engine noises. Handling is the whole argument. There is no wheel-and-pedals conversation to have here, because two wheels means gamepad territory, and the game is built for it: analogue triggers for front and rear braking, smooth lean inputs on the left stick, and a real penalty for grabbing anything suddenly. That penalty is steep at first. Trail braking into a corner while the rear steps out is not something you pick up in an evening, and the first few hours involve a lot of watching your rider cartwheel through gravel. The saving grace is that the assist menu is genuinely granular rather than a single easy/hard toggle. Braking assist, traction control, anti-wheelie and auto-lean can each be dialled down separately, and the rewind function lets you undo one bad apex instead of restarting an eight-lap race. Casual riders can turn everything on, win some races, then peel the aids back one at a time as their inputs get smoother. That gradual ramp is the most accessible thing Milestone has built into a bike game, and it is the reason I would point a curious newcomer here rather than at older entries. Content-wise there is a lot of bike to chew through. The roster runs from small naked bikes and supersports up to full superbikes, each category handling distinctly enough that switching classes genuinely resets your braking markers. Career runs on a rival system where specific opponents get flagged as your problem and you settle it on track, which does more for motivation than a flat list of events. Endurance racing is the standout format: pit stops, rider swaps in the fiction, and light changing over a long run, so the same corner you nailed in daylight becomes a guessing game later. Bike customisation and the livery editor are deep enough that people will absolutely lose entire evenings painting things instead of racing. The Special Edition tag mostly means extra bike and cosmetic content folded in from the start rather than a different game underneath; the riding model is identical. Where it disappoints: the AI still rides like it cannot see you. Opponents commit to their line regardless of whether your front wheel is already there, and a clean overtake can turn into a highside because someone else refused to yield. Difficulty scaling is uneven too, with the jump between AI levels sometimes larger than the gap in your own skill. On PC the Unreal Engine foundation brings the usual baggage of shader stutter and load times that feel long for what is being loaded, so budget some settings-menu time on modest hardware. And for my crowd, the multiplayer picture is mixed. Split screen exists, which I always appreciate, but it is a two-rider affair rather than a four-player couch tournament, and online lobbies for a niche bike sim this many years after launch are not exactly crowded. Bring a friend and arrange your own races rather than trusting matchmaking to fill a grid on a Tuesday night. So: not the game for four people and a case of something cold. It is the game for one or two people who want to spend a month getting a lap time down at the Nordschleife equivalent of pain, and who find satisfaction in the moment a corner finally clicks. The 82 percent Very Positive score from nearly four thousand Steam reviews tracks with my experience, praise for the riding and the rain, grumbling about the AI and the performance. If bikes are your thing, this is the best current option on PC. If you wanted a sports title everyone can pick up at a party, keep looking.

Riley · Scout Team

Sports & racing

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