2015, what a year. It’s been a year where I spent many an hour retreating old games with shiny new visuals, but also one where I experienced gameplay and graphical fidelity unlike anything I’d seen in the thirty-five years that I’ve been playing video games. Here are some of the highlights of my gaming year.

PlayStation 4 exclusive The Order: 1886 broke new ground in interactive storytelling. A visual feast depicting characters and Victorian London with almost photo-real clarity, sadly it didn’t get the acclaim I thought it deserved.

Press coverage for The Order, instead of lauding the interesting story and beautiful visuals, decided to slaughter the game, deriding it for is brevity, excessive quick time events and lengthy cut-scenes. I think they missed the point, myself, but it meant that the game was practically stillborn. Such a shame.

Despite my misgivings based on playing a preview build, Techland’s Dying Light managed to reinvent the open-world zombie game that the developer practically invented with their Dead Island series. Intelligent, interesting and above all pretty frightening, Dying Light immediately took my top spot when it comes to surviving a virtual zombie apocalypse.

EA’s Battlefield Hardline didn’t quite do it for me. Whilst I salute Visceral Studios for trying something different with DICE’s Battlefield series, Hardline was perhaps too much of a departure. In swapping huge battlegrounds for urban cops and robbers, the game lacked the scale and excitement of it’s military-themed predecessors. By all accounts, still a good game, but not a good Battlefield game.

Cities: Skylines on PC was a pleasant surprise. The city building game manages to take everything that was wrong with SimCity (a game that I personally still enjoyed) and create a nigh-on perfect example of the sometimes embittered genre.

Easy to get to grips with, beautiful to look at and relatively bug-free, Cities: Skylines has become my go-to city building game. With the introduction of a day/night cycle later in the year, the game became even more beautiful to look at.

Ori and the Blind Forest provided a charming break from the AAA action-fests that dominated 2015. Taking more than a little inspiration from the visual style of Hayao Miyazaki and his Studio Ghibli animated movies, Ori and the Blind Forest follows the trials of the orphaned guardian spirit, Ori.

It sends players on a magical journey and is full of emotion. At its heart, though, Ori and the Blind Forest is no more than an old-school platformer which with repeated plays felt more and more derivative. A great game if you are looking for something short and sweet.

As a gamer that likes a bit of story with my action, 2K’s multiplayer squad shooter, Evolve didn’t really do it for me. It’s nice idea, being a member of a group of mercenaries charged with hunting and killing a gigantic player-controlled monster, but it lacked that Left 4 Dead feeling of comradery.

I’ve returned to the game many times over the year and enjoyed my time with it, but there are plenty of other games that I’d sooner be playing. To all intents and purposes, Evolve is still a great game, but not necessarily my sort of game.

The classic fighting franchise, Mortal Kombat made it’s new-gen debut in 2015 with Mortal Kombat X. With new-gen visuals, the series gruesome finishing mores were too much for Australian censors which slapped it with an R rating.

With a great story featuring character both old and new, beautiful graphics and some fantastic gameplay, Mortal Kombat X is the best fighting game I’ve played in a long time.

In real life I’d say that two wheels are better than four when it comes to having fun on the road. I’ve never really found a game that has managed to capture the excitement of motorcycling. Milestone S.r.l.’s Ride comes close.

Building on their successful Moto GP franchise, the Italian developers have, with Ride, created a game that celebrates the motorcyclist, their machine and racing on the open road.

Whilst it was released in 2014, Dragon Age: Inquisition dominated my playing schedule throughout 2015 due to the great DLC release during the year that bought the amazing story to its conclusion. The game received seven expansions during 2015, from the beautiful and varied terrain in the Jaws of Hakken to the conclusion of Trespasser. The Black Emporium gave players opportunity to change their character’s face (something that my unfortunate-looking Inquisitor was in dire need of).

The crowd funded / developed Project CARS really upped the ante when it comes to racing games. It the tradition of Gran Turismo, Forza Motorsport and GRID AutoSport, Project CARS is a driving simulator rather than an arcade racer.

Project CARS copped a lot of flak for being virtually unplayable on a gamepad. With a decent steering wheel and shifter, however, the game is in a league of its own. Add a couple more monitors for a panoramic view of the track and it’s just like being there, sitting in a race car.

May 2015 finally saw the release of one of the year’s most anticipated games, The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt. This is the game that I still return to when I game in my own time. CD Projekt RED polished up the gameplay that they had been developing over the last two games and dropped players in a gorgeous open-world.

The vast world of The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt offers player hours and hours of adventure, which the developers augmented with 12 free DLC packs and an expansion called Hearts of Stone.

Warner’s Batman: Arkham Knight managed to polarise the fans. Not a game that I had to review, but one that I purchased myself, on PC. Whilst the console version was, for the most part, celebrated, the PC version was not. PC gamers reported performance issues and missing effects indicated a badly-ported console to PC game.

Running Batman: Arkham Knight on a PC-rig bordering on the un-natural, my 32 gigs and 2xSLI GTX980 machine never really had any problems running the game, much to the ire of my peers. Still the PC version was a massive fail for both Warner Interactive and nVIDIA, whose Gameworks code seems to be a root cause of many of the problems. To this day, Batman: Arkham Knight still doesn’t run as intended on PC.

Rory McIlroy PGA Tour kicked of EA Sports’ annual barrage of sports sims. The franchises two-year break allowed the developers to rebuild the game using Battlefield’s Frostbite engine and even including the Battlefield 4-themed Paracel Islands course.

I found the fantasy courses in Rory McIlroy PGA Tour more interesting than the real-life course which is probably because I don’t follow the game on TV. Still, PGA Tour is a good game and a was a great start to the 2015 EA Sports season.

I feel that I’d played every game that’ll ever be made. Most games wear their inspiration on their sleeve to such an extent that they seem like no more than derivative rehashes. Original gaming experiences are few and far between. Sony’s Everyone’s Gone to the Rapture is one of the most original games that I’ve played in a long time.

Derided as being no more than a walking simulator by those that fail to be engaged by the game’s subtle storytelling, Everyone’s Gone to the Rapture is an apocalyptic game with a difference. Set in a deserted English village, the game reveals the tragic events that befall on the people at the end of the world. It’s a very British horror story in the vein of Nigel Kneale’sQuatermass and one that keeps you thinking about it long after you’ve switched it off.

The PlayStation 4 exclusive Until Dawn was a bit of a surprise. Perfectly capturing the teen slasher movie look and feel, the game put the lives of a group of friends trapped in a mountain lodge in the hands of the player. Everyone that I spoke to about the game had a different experience with it. Not the longest game out there, but certainly nigh-on perfectly formed.

2015 saw the release of a game that seemed to have taken forever to arrive. Hideo Kojima’s Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain arrived in a storm of controversy that, for a change, had nothing to do with the game’s female lead wearing next to nothing. The launch was overshadowed by the seemingly very public, and rather unprofessional, spat between the game’s publishers, Konami, and the Metal Gear series’ creator, Hideo Kojima.

Regardless of the politics surrounding the game, Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain is a superb effort, with the open-world gameplay taking the series’ tried and tested mechanics to a new level.

As accomplished as it is, I thought that Microsoft’s Forza Motosport 6 failed to live up to the excitement of 2014’s Forza Horizons 2.

Still a beautiful game, possibly the best-looking racing game ever, Forza 6 felt held back by the real-life locations that we’ve seen countless times before. The end result is a very accomplished game, but one that still feels a bit sterile.

Destiny: The Taken King proved to be more than just an expansion for Activision’s acclaimed shooter. Destiny’s second year of adventure kicked off by wiping Game of Thrones actor, Peter Dinklage’s much-maligned voice-over work from the game and replacing it with that of Uncharted’s Nolan North.

The inclusion of a revised leveling system, more akin to traditional role-playing games in Destiny: The Taken King as well as new missions, locations and a sinister new foe makes the game feel fresh again.

In a seemingly desperate move to shake their alleged misogynistic reputation, EA’s FIFA 16 includes, for the very first time, a selection of Women’s international teams. I found it to be a rather welcome move, making the 2016 entry more than just a roster update with a few token gameplay changes.

EA Sports’FIFA 16 is also the best looking entry in the series, the developers really starting to embrace the new-gen console’s graphics abilities.

Rock Band 4 re-introduced a new-generation of gamers to the rhythm music game. As I said in my review, Rock Band 4 was likely borne out of necessity over anything else as the die-hard Rock Band fans replaced their PS3s and Xbox 360s with new-gen consoles.

Rock Band 4 really doesn’t bring anything new to the table, apart from freestyle solos, which allow you to basically go mad with your instrument and still make a sound that seems like real music. Despite the lack of innovation for this fourth outing, Rock Band 4 is still an excellent game. The fact that you can still use your old instruments and previously purchased music make the game an essential purchase for fans.

I wasn’t particularly happy when I found out that Rise of the Tomb Raider was being release, initially anyway, as an Xbox exclusive. I’d been playing the Tomb Raider reboot on PC, with all its exquisite graphics cranked up to the max. I just could help but think that the Xbox One version’s visuals could be anything other than a disappointment.

Of course, I was wrong. The Rise of the Tomb Raider development team had been working closely with the guys at Microsoft to ensure that the latest adventure of Lara Croft looked nothing short of fabulous on the Xbox One. Whilst lacking a bit in the story department, the inclusion of more tombs to raider was welcome, even if the puzzles are still a lot easier that they were back in the day.

Likely in response to Harmonix and their rebooting of the Rock Band franchise, Activision countered with their Guitar Hero Live. Whereas Rock Band was essentially the same as before, it was all change for Guitar Hero.

With an almost retro feel, Guitar Hero Live uses real-life video from the point of view of the guitar player to put you right into the performance. The Guitar Hero TV experience allows players to stream official music videos and play them on the redesigned Guitar Hero guitar.

Fans of post-apocalyptic role-playing games got everything they could wish for with the release of Fallout 4. Not only does the game offer players a vast world to explore and a superb story, but you can also spend literally hours building things.

In previous games I’ve often wondered why the developers littler the world with useless objects. In Fallout 4 I could break items down to material and create all sorts of things from essential water purification systems to rather extravagant outdoor lighting.

In the build-up for the release of the new Star Wars movie, The Force Awakens, the release of EA Games’ Star Wars Battlefront was perfectly timed. The free DLC, The Battle of Jakku, offered players their first peek at a key new location from the film.

With visuals plucked straight from the movies, Star Wars Battlefront, pressed all the right buttons for me and many of us that had been waiting nearly forty years to step into the movies. Many, however, were a bit upset with the lack of content included in the retail package and the price tag that EA put on the game’s season pass.

When it comes to over-the-top action, the Just Cause series turns it up to eleven. With Just Cause 3 Avalanche Studios took what was best about the other games- blowing shit up, and basically made the game all about that. The result is a game that doesn’t take itself too seriously, but offers players a crazy amount of fun.

You can spend hours in Just Cause 3 just designing mayhem. Be it tying stuff together and watching what happens or putting rocket mines on cows’ butts and having them fly about before exploding in a red mist. Naughty, but nice.

I’m still putting the finishing touches together for my Call of Duty: Black Ops III review. A far cry from last year’s Advance Warfare, Black Ops III has, in my mind, finally pushed the series too far away from its original premise and turned Call of Duty into a sci-fi shooter.

With an enjoyable if incomprehensible single-player campaign and a multiplayer experience that feels borrowed from Titanfall (but without the big robots), Call of Duty: Black Ops III really jumps the shark, giving us a fun, if totally brain-dead entry in to the series.

After last year’s critically panned game, I was surprised to find that the Victorian London-based Assassin’s Creed Syndicate shared most of its gameplay with the very similarly styled Assassin’s Creed Unity. It was interesting to find that whilst one game was derided regarding awkward controls, this new, much-lauded entry seemed to share most of the same mechanics.

Assassin’s Creed Syndicate did, however, work right out of the box on both console and PC. Personally I found the brother / sister team of Jacob and Evie Frye not as interesting as previous protagonists (notably Edward Kenway, who they will forever have trouble following) and the setting, Victorian London a bit too familiar and not as exotic as, say, the pirate-ridden Caribbean.

Ubisoft’s Rainbow Six: Siege, for me, suffers in a similar way that many found with Star Wars Battlefront. In leaving out the traditional single-player experience, the game just did sit well with me. Here was a full-priced game to all intents and purposes missing half of its content.

Don’t get me wrong, the multiplayer experience in Rainbow Six: Siege is very well honed, but with only a handful of maps, I’d hardly have called it complete. Add the real need for online co-operation into the mix and you’ve got a game that can really only be played within your circle of friends.

It was the year of the remaster and resurrecting games that were originally released in previous years I’ve deliberately left them out of the list above. I took a look at Saints Row IV: Re-Elected, DMC Devil May Cry: Definitive Edition, Borderlands: The Handsome Jack Collection, Journey, God of War III Remastered, Rare Replay and Uncharted: The Nathan Drake Collection. With the exception of Journey and Uncharted: The Nathan Drake Collection, none of the others really did it for me. Rare Replay was an interesting trip down memory lane, but there was no way I was playing a thirty-five-year-old game for hours. Borderlands: The Handsome Jack Collection was good, but these where game that were still fresh in my mind and, quite frankly, looked just as good on the last-gen consoles.

2015 has been an epic gaming year, with the release of many games that we had been waiting quite some time for. There was very little to be disappointed with, either, with most games living up to the hype, the notable exceptions being Star Wars Battlefront (which could never have lived up to that sort of hype) and the disappointing PC port of Batman: Arkham Knight.

I’m going to close this feature with a list of my top games for 2015:

Best Story –Everyone’s Gone to the Rapture

Best Graphics – Star Wars Battlefront

Best Shooter/Combat Game – Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain

Best RPG – The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt

Best Sports Game – FIFA 16

Best Music Game – Guitar Hero Live

Best Racing Game – Project CARS

Best Action Game – Just Cause 3

Best Sci-Fi Game – Fallout 4

Best DLC – Dragon Age Inquisition: The Jaws of Hakkon

Best Remaster – Uncharted: The Nathan Drake Collection

Game of the Year – The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt

Here’s to a great 2016!

The post 2015 – A Gaming Year in Review appeared first on Shane the Gamer.

Milestones.r.l., Italy’s leading videogame developer for consoles and PC, and the world’s foremost developer of videogames dedicated to the world of motorcycling, has just revealed MyRIDE Challenge, the Collectible Card Game on mobile platforms (iOS Smartphones and Tablets) that captures all the motorcycling essence of RIDE, Milestone’s first exclusive Intellectual Property, launched last March on the Xbox 360,Xbox One, Windows PC,Steam, PlayStation 3 and PlayStation 4.

MyRIDE Challenge is packed with new features for motorcycling fans looking for a more portable on-the-move experience.

The wide range of different card types available in MyRIDE Challenge guarantees rich and varied gameplay with each card representing a particular bike model. There are more than 300 models to collect from the main bike manufacturers (Aprilia, Bimota, Honda, KTM, MVAgusta, Suzuki, Triumph, and Yamaha).

The bikes are divided into 3 classes – Sport, Naked, and Historical – and each one features 5 characteristics: Speed, Acceleration, Grip, Handling,and Style.

The cards can be split into 4 categories depending on rarity: Common, Not Common, Rare, and Ultra Rare. On the basis of its rarity a card can reach a higher maximum level. Combine two identical bike cards to create a special Foil version of the original card.

Component cards are special cards that allow the player to customise cards that feature a Custom Slot, whereas XP Cards allocate experience points to bike cards,and can only be used during the upgrade phase. These kinds of cards can be won in events or purchased in the shop.

MyRIDE Challenge features a robust Single Player mode, where players can take part in a series of matches on all the circuits and locations from the Console/PC version of RIDE, for a total of 15 locations.

Each match consists of 4 turns where one of the player’s bike cards goes up against an opponent’s bike card on one or two specific characteristics. Whoever wins the most turns wins the match. At the end of the match the player collects prizes awarded on the basis of the result, experience points, and virtual currency that can be used to customise and tune up their bike cards.

The management menus offer various options allowing players to customise and improve their game experience. In this section players can sacrifice unused cards to increase the experience, and therefore the level, of another card they hold. If there are 2 identical cards in their deck an option will appear allowing the player to upgrade their double cards, increasing rarity. Tune Your Cards is a section players can manage their Components cards (mount them on the bikes, repair them, etc.).

The MyRIDE Challenge virtual shop offers players the opportunity to purchase items with both virtual currency and real money, containing Component Cards, XP Cards, or Generic Bike Cards which can be purchased with virtual currency in packs of 1, 10, or 25 cards.

Players can also purchase virtual currency in bundles of various values.

“MyRIDE Challenge is a new way to experience the excitement of competitive motorcycling,” says Luisa Bixio, Milestone V.P., “and it will always be to hand, in the pockets and bags of racing fans everywhere.”

Developed in collaboration with the Italian studio Broken Arms Games Pty Ltd TM, MyRIDE Challenge is available on iOS (freemium version) now.

The post GOTTA RIDE‘EM ALL! appeared first on Shane the Gamer.

I once heard it said that riding a motorcycle is as close as you can get to piloting a jet fighter without actually piloting a jet fighter.

And I tend to agree.

For a motorcyclist, there’s absolutely no comparison to be made between driving a car at breakneck speed and the absolute thrill of riding a motorbike at full throttle.

They are two very different animals.

Whereas a driver simply controls his car using pedals and a steering wheel, a motorcycle becomes an extension of its rider. The motorcyclist’s whole body influences the machine not just his hands and feet.

It’s a strange symbiotic relationship between man and machine that is very hard to explain, and even harder to translate into a video game.

That’s probably why car racing games are ten a penny and you can count the amount of motorbike racing franchises on one hand. And, most of those motorcycle racing franchises come from one stable- Italian developers Milestone S.r.l.

Following on from their hugely successful MotoGP games, Milestone’s Ride sets out to do for motorcycling what the Forza and Gran Turismo games have done for car racing; they want to provide gamers with their own motorcycle racing simulator.

And, by and large, they have succeeded.

Unlike many of its adrenaline fueled peers, Ride’s presentation doesn’t do much, initially, to inspire much confidence in the game.

It’s introduced by an Englishman waffling on about some deep meaningful stuff. It’s well-written and well-enunciated.

But I didn’t come for a Shakespeare reading. As educational as the voice-over guy is, he’s no Jeremy Clarkson and instead offers up a pretty dry and uninspiring introduction to the game that’ll either put you to sleep or make you consider saving yourself some time and returning the game to EB Games without playing it.

To be honest, the game’s presentation is a bit ropey, even worse I’d say than the same developer’s MotoGP 14. But, it seems, unlike many a polished AAA turd, the developers have spent the money on the gameplay and not the fancy intro and testosterone soaked announcers.

Yes folks, Ride is actually a very, very good game.

Let’s start with the bikes. There’s over 100 licenced motorcycles in the game ranging from 80’s classics to 2015 models. Each bike has been meticulously modeled to create beautiful virtual reproductions of some of the world’s best superbikes.

I found myself getting all blurry eyed over the game’s beautifully modeled 1986 Yamaha FZR750- my dream bike back in the day, and the 2014 Kwacker Ninja ZX10R, the bike that I’d buy now if I still had the bottle to hit the road at breakneck speed on two wheels.

As well as licensed machines from all the big manufacturers, including an electric bike from Lightening, the game features hundreds of licenced performance upgrade parts from the likes of Arrow Exhausts, D.I.D and Pirelli.

The game also allows players to kit their rider out in style with helmets from Shoei, Arai and AGV, boots from Sidi, some Alpinestars gloves and a number of cool-looking Dainese jackets.

You can easily waste a lot of time swapping parts to get the best out of your machines. Even if you are not technically minded, you can still spend an awfully long time kitting out your rider to ensure that they are both stylish and coordinating with their bike.

Whilst the bikes are well modeled and rider animations fluid, the general level of graphical fidelity is shockingly average.

Generic-looking buildings line streets that are bounded with cookie-cut crowds robotically fist-pumping the air.

It’s clear that Ride is another of those awkward cross-gen titles granting current-gen console owners a higher resolution, more stable framerate but little else over their last-gen brethren.

The lighting, for instance, is very old school. None of the environments can hold a light to the likes of Forza Horizon 2 or Driveclub.

But, as I alluded to earlier, thankfully it’s not all about graphics and presentation.

This is a game about riding a bike and the developers, Milestone, are about the best studio in the world when it comes to digital simulating the subtle art of motorcycle racing.

Fans of the genre will know that it is Milestone that have practically dominated motorcycle racing games for well over a decade.

Their MotoGP games are generally well-received, but often suffering from the same sub-par presentation problems that somewhat mar Ride.

This time, in moving away from the constraints of the MotoGP licence they have been able to add more motorcycle variations and some more interesting circuits.

The game ships with fifteen circuits ranging from dramatic fantasy tracks based on the landscapes of Sierra Nevada, North Wales and the French Riviera to classic motorcycle racing circuits like Donnington and Magny-Cours, via street-racing circuits set in Miami and Milan. There’s something for everyone.

Unlike MotoGP where players are committed to a world championship, there’s no structured campaign in Ride. Instead it’s all about all about prize money and reputation. The more money and wins the more bikes become available to buy. No matter what you do in the game you advance your rider.

And there’s plenty to do.

The menu at the start gives you plenty of ways in which to embark on your motorcycle racing career. There’s a choice of World Tour, Quick Mode, Online, as well as some customisation in My Rider and the game options.

To get right into the thick of it, World Tour grants access to a series of World Tour Events tailored to certain categories of bike based on engine capacity, type, age and manufacturer.

Most are a series of single races that can be undertaken at the player’s leisure, but there’s a few multi-race championships thrown in there as well.

The World Tour mode also has a series of unlockable Elite Trophy races for big cash and new bike prizes. These races become available chronologically one you start climbing the game’s world rankings.

It’s in this section where players buy new bikes, customise them with after-market parts and view their collection. Players can also pick the My Rider option to kit out their rider and the use the Teammates page to select a teammate from the AI driver list or pick a Ride owning friend.

The Online option allows players to quickly get into a multiplayer race with up to eleven other racers or create an online race themselves.

It’s only after having experienced an online race that you realise just how kamikaze the AI opponents are. Real players are a lot more careful on corners and when overtaking whilst the AI seems to rigidly stick to the racing line.

If time is short and you can’t afford to mess about, Quick Mode gets you straight in there without any fuss. Either for a Quick Race, using any bike (you can even rent a bike that you don’t own) on the track of your choice, or a few laps of Time Trial.

The glaring omission is the inability to choose the weather and time of day for your race.

It’s here in Quick Mode that you can also set up a split-screen race with a friend, opening up all sorts of opportunities for couch competitions.

There’s also a tutorial option to help players get to grips with the controls, which are a bit more complicated than those of a car racing game.

Ride is not an easy game to get into for the novice.

The steering is very sensitive compared to car racing games. I’d even goes as far to say it feels a little too sensitive sometimes.

Leaning or braking too much will send your rider sliding down the road, as will hitting anything, including other riders.

Throttle up too quickly and you’ll likely do an impressive, but usually catastrophic, wheelie. Same goes for applying too much front brake, if you’ve got independent braking switched on; stoppies are cool, but not on the race track.

The game has a rather steep learning curve that can be off-putting at first. But, in my opinion Ride is as unforgiving as a motorcycle sim should be; if it were any easier you may as well be playing a car racing game.

In saying that, Ride has all the usual aids you would expect in a racer, such as racing line and auto-braking, but it is best played with as little help as possible.

In fact, part from the racing line and automatic gears, I’d recommend switching off any help as soon as you can.

Sure, you will crash a lot, but once you’ve got the idea that you can’t ride everywhere at full throttle things get easier. Even then, if you have any momentary lapses, you can always hit the rewind button, unless you’ve gone totally hardcore and switched them off as well.

Ride gives players an extraordinary amount of control to the player.

Throttle and steering are a no-brainer, but there’s also front AND rear brakes as well. You can also shift the rider’s weight forward and backwards and tuck-in low on the tank to lessen drag and increase speed.

A great addition, which I’d like to see in other racers, is the semi-automatic gears as standard. This allows players to dabble with changing gears at their leisure. Learning good use of the gears is essential to aid speed reduction and to quickly power away from opponents.

Loads of beautiful motorcycles, some great circuits and a very comprehensive, yet intuitive control system round off a great motorcycle racing experience.

Ride isn’t an easy game to master, but is still very accommodating. Allowing players to get to grips with it at their own pace. It is at its best when played with all the riding aids off, but it may take some time to get proficient enough to play it that way.

The graphics are a bit disappointing for a PS4, especially compared to other current-gen racers and the lack of weather and time of day options is a bit of a shame.

But this is a cross-gen game, and when negotiating hair-pin turns on some of the world’s most powerful motorcycles eying up the scenery is going to be the last thing on your mind.

Despite being somewhat rough around the edges, at its heart, Ride is a very competent and thrilling simulation of motorcycle racing.

Ride is out now on PlayStation 3, Xbox One, Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and Windows PC.

The post Ride Review appeared first on Shane the Gamer.

This offers the chance to ride over 100 bikes in 4 different categories – Superbikes, Supersports, Naked and Historical Bikes.

In RIDE, the player will travel the world, visiting exclusive motorbike festivals and joining challenging race events. With every race, the players increasing reputation will allow them to challenge the best riders in the world, be invited to more Motorbike Festivals and the ability to collect your favorite bikes.

The bike owned by the player can be customized and upgraded both visually and mechanically in five main areas including Transmission ; Gear, Quick Shifter and Chain, Wheels – Wheel Rims and Tires, Engine – Electronic Control Unit, Air Filter, Prepared Head, Oil Replacement and Exhaust, Brakes and Suspensions – Brake Discs, Calipers, Lines and Suspension and finally Appearance – Livery from official catalogue, Turn Signals, RearPlate, Side Mirrors, Brakes and Shifter Levers, handlebar, grips

A bike fanatic can also pay a lot of attention to the customization of their riding suit and bike.

RIDE supports a high level of customization to fulfill this aspect. Not only will the player be able to customize their Bikes, but also their helmets, jackets, trousers, suits, boots, gloves and sliders with licensed and leading brands.

In addition to customising and upgrading every aspect of your bike, selecting the right setup, changing gears at the right moment and reach the end of the straight in the lowest time possible in heated Drag Racing events.

In all you will be able to race on 7 Grand Prix circuits, explore 5 country routes thought beautiful landscapes from around the world, trying two dedicated city circuits or test your skills on a special track.

There is also ‘Async’ Multiplayer Modes, many of the events of the World Tour can be raced only by teams of two or more riders of the same Motoclub. Those riders’ behavior will be modeled after your friends performance.

Ride is an intuitive and highly detailed motorbike racer and scheduled to release for PlayStation 4, PlayStation 3, Xbox One, Xbox 360 and PC on the 20th of March, 2015.

The post Gear Up to Take a Ride in 2015 – News appeared first on Shane the Gamer.