It's finally November! That means that there are only 30 short days until one of my most anticipated games of the year, Ride3, finally drops. What's Ride3 you ask? Only the third installment of the best motorcycle racing simulator series ever made or ever to be made. Okay, that's laying it on a bit thick I admit, but the Ride series is pretty fantastic. What makes the series so fantastic? Well, read on.
VIDYA GAMES
Made by Italian game studio Milestone, the Ride series is like Sony Interactive's Gran Turismo series but with bikes. It's an immersive, highly-detailed racing simulator that allows players to ride an array of bikes from IRL OEMs on a slew of painstakingly replicated real-world tracks. Also, like Gran Turismo, the racing is secondary to the game's fun factor because the good stuff is in the game's powerful bike customization suite.
In Ride2, the series' current installment, players can customize everything on their bikes from exhaust, tires, and mirrors to the gear ratios in the gearbox. You can spend hundreds of hours in the garage tweaking and testing your bike to get just that much more speed or power or agility out of them. Ask me how I know. Back in June, Milestone announced that in addition to all that, Ride3 would have an additional livery editor. A trailer showing off that livery editor just dropped and, whew lad.
If the video is to be believed, Ride3's livery editor looks like it has a brazillion different options from colors and graphics to what looks like a weathering system that allows you to add scuffs, wear, dirt, and grime to your bike for a little more verisimilitude. Me? I'm all 'bout that verisimilitude. The video is edited kinda weird and the cuts are super fast, but it looks like there's a Photoshop-style layer system in there along with a bunch of fiddly controls to please your inner detail-oriented nerd.
Ride3 drops November 30, 2018, on PS4, Xbox One, and PC. I'm a PC (master race) man myself, so I'll be grabbing this on Steam as soon as it's available on the 30th. A review will come soon after. Who knows, if there's enough interest maybe I'll put together a RideApart Steam group so we can all do a little racing. Keep your eyes peeled.