After seeing those trailers that they've been putting out lately I thought this game was gonna be absolute junk. I was pleasantly surprised though.First off, it uses a similar launcher to MotoGP 08 so all the settings are the same or very similar.
The main menu is pretty cool, has slow-motion of riders on the track, one of my favorites is Rossi looking back at Lorenzo. Very cool.
You have options to do Instant Race which throws you in a random track with a random rider. GP mode where you can select full weekend, qualifying and race or just the race and then modify the settings of the weekend from sunny to rainy to whatever, and other stuff like tire degradation.
Championship and Career, Career lets you start with a customized rider with a new team that will hire you as a wild card and then as you get better and get more points and level up more teams will contract you and you'll move from either Moto3 to MotoGP or from a CRT bike up. Not too sure how Championship is different from GP mode. I'm guessing you choose a real rider and race as them in it.
There's a level up system, too, and as you move up in it, you'll unlock more riders like Crutchlow. Not sure if there's any other benefits to leveling up. Maybe some in-game extras like videos or images.
Onto the races now. The loading screen is pretty cool, it shows quotes and the track info. Also shows a video that they show you on TV when they visit a track.
You have a pit crew and a cheife technician who you can talk to with pre-written commands about what's wrong with your bike. For example, I can tell him that the bike is too slow to get in the corner and he'll tell you that they'll adjust the damping or rebound or whatever you need to go in the corner faster. I noticed some difference after this feedback, but I'm not too good at the game to actually tell.
The gameplay in this game is difficult to say the least (playing on Semi-pro) with automatic tuck, and full TCS. If you don't get your braking done right and you follow your line perfectly you'll run wide, so it's not arcadey at all, so if you're looking for a fun and simple motorcycle racing game to play, this isn't it. You're gonna have to put some effort in it to get anywhere.
The cameras which are both a blessing and a curse (at the beginning.) The helmet cam is the coolest thing ever. (VERY similar to the one in NFS Shift 2) The rider looks into the corners and makes it much easier to see where you're going, compared to MotoGP 08 which was a pain since the POV camera was locked in. There's another POV camera that isn't the helmet cam which has a wider and brighter field of view (doesn't block the gauge cluster.) The bike is very bouncy in the helmet cam and will take some getting used to it. I kept thinking the bike was doing a wheelie until I got used to the automatic tucking.
Tracks are nice and detailed, but since I've never rode on any of them, I can't say exactly to how accurate they are to real life, but they seem to be good,
Graphics maxed out with 4xSSAA at 1680x1050 on my 7870 and Q9550 @ 3.8GHz get me around 40-60 FPS, so performance is decent, but I don't know why it's this low. The game isn't that demanding, maybe a patch down the road will fix it. And it looks nice, not F1 2012 good, but nice and detailed enough for me not to complain.
My biggest gripe with the game though, is the terrible sound. If you've been to a MotoGP race, you'll understand what I'm talking about. These bikes are EXTREMELY loud in real life, and even on TV you can tell they're loud. But this game fails at this. The bikes all sound weak, and nothing like the real bikes. More like 250cc twin engine than a 1000cc MotoGP bike.
If you're a MotoGP fan, and willing to put the effort in the game, I say get it, otherwise, I say just wait a little bit for it to be cheaper.
Verdict:75/100
Genre(s): Racing
Developer: MileStone Inc.
Release Date: June 21, 2013
Minimum Requirements:
Operating System: Windows®XP™ SP2, Windows®Vista™ or Windows®7
Processor: Intel™ 2.4Ghz or similar
Hard disk space: 5,5 GB
RAM: 1GB
Video Card: NVIDIA® Geforce 8800 GT or, AMD® Radeon™ HD 3870 or higher (it must be able to manage Pixel Shader 3.0) with at least 512MB of display memory
Recommended Requirements:
Processor: Intel™ Core 2 Duo / AMD™ Athlon 64 X2 or higher
RAM: 2 GB on Windows®XP™, 3 GB on Windows®Vista™ and 4 GB on Windows®7
Screen: 19” LCD Wide Screen or bigger.
Video card: NVIDIA® GeForce™ series 9000 or higher, AMD® Radeon™ HD4000 series or higher (it must be able to manage Pixel Shader 3.0) with at least 1GB of display memory. Laptop versions of these cards are not fully supported
Supported peripherals: Xbox 360 Controller
