Square Enix recently invited me to their headquarters to check out Ride 2 which will be getting a North American release on February 14, 2017. I also had the chance to chat and casually interview Michele Caletti from Milestone who is the Lead Programmer and Creator of the Ride video games. Ride 2 is a motorcycle racing game which features licensed bikes and tracks to help you best experience the thrill of racing at top speeds. I’ve never been a pro at racing video games, but from my short time with the game, it appears to capture the feelings and sound of motorcycle racing.
Ride 2 includes more than 50 tracks and over 30 locations, approximately double the first Ride video game. During my chat with Michele Caletti he explained that Ride 2 incorporates many different licenses into the video game. You can play as either a male or female character though your helmet is on most of the time (if not all the time) so the difference between the two is minimal. Caletti explained that Ride 2 will include weekly challenges that are made by their development team to challenges players and keep the game fresh. These free weekly challenges will help yield their own rewards but you can also obtain rewards and Performance Points by racing through the World Tour.
I asked about things like creating your own motorcycle from scratch but that is not possible as the development team is locked into licensed franchises only. There is also no way to create your own maps to share with friends online which is a much-desired feature according to comments and feedback on their gameplay trailers. Michele Caletti said that the Ride 2 North American release would contain updates, patches, and improvements from feedback and fan suggestions they received from their European release though we had no way of witnessing that at our demonstration.
Ride 2 will allow players to mimic racing emulation to some degree as you can scale back the assists from the video game or you can use racing defaults to assist you in your quest to finish first. I only had about 15 minutes to play the game in person and couldn’t make it 20 feet before I was falling off of my cycle and into the wall so be warned there is a learning curve. The Milestone development team included racing tracks with either sun or rain conditions and tried to match realism in the audio effects and cycles themselves. We’ll try to follow up with a full review when the game releases for PlayStation 4, Xbox One and PC.