Reviewed: June 25, 2002
Reviewed by: Mark Smith

Publisher
THQ

Developer
Climax (UK)

Released: May 20, 2002
Genre: Racing
Players: 4
ESRB: Everyone

9
10
8
10
9.4

Supported Features

Based on Dorna’s FIM Road Racing World Championship Grand Prix, MotoGP is the pinnacle of two-wheeled sports with a 50-year history and over 1.4 million trackside spectators. MotoGP offers gamers the latest in biking technology with ten famous tracks and renowned riders from more than 21 countries.

MotoGP is fully licensed so you have all the real bikes and riders from the 2001 racing season. There are multiple game modes to offer you a customized racing experience ranging from fun arcade action to a realistic racing simulation with RPG-like statistics for your riders.

Racing games often seem to come out of the same mold regardless of whether your are racing cars, motorcycles, boats, or airplanes. It’s easy to get jaded when another racer hits the shelves, but after a few days with one of these crotch-rockets between your legs you will quickly discover just how deep MotoGP actually is.

Here is a complete list of features:

• Ten real world tracks to race on, with up to 20 racers onscreen
• All of the bikes and riders from the 2001 MotoGP series
• Ultra-realistic bike physics engine with independent braking and rider balancing
• Intuitive, arcade style control system with simulation features for the hardcore racing fan
• Split screen, multiplayer mode supporting up to four players or link up to 16 Xbox systems
• Six modes to choose from: Arcade, GP, Time Trial, Training, Multiplayer and Single Race
• Ultra realistic replay mode, from a variety of dynamic camera viewpoints
• Multiple types of weather including sunny, cloudy and wet

You are then given 10 attribute points that you can assign to four riding skills; cornering, braking, top speed, and acceleration. Each skill has a maximum of 20 possible points and as you progress through the Grand Prix mode you can increase this maximum up to 30 points. You will be awarded additional points at the end of each Grand Prix race that you are free to assign to any skill you wish.

MotoGP comes in two flavors – fun arcade racer and serious simulation. Regardless of which mode you decide to play first you will want to check out the comprehensive training mode that includes 20 challenging trials – 5 lessons for each skill. Not only do these lessons get you acquainted with the fundamentals of motorcycle riding and handling, they also reward you with attribute points. Each lesson has a silver and a gold medal, and you are awarded one point for each. If you are feeling lucky you can skip the silver and go for the gold and 2 instant points. Unlike the points awarded in Grand Prix mode, these are automatically assigned to the skill for which you are training.

The physics of riding a motorcycle have been perfectly reproduced in this game, and every button on the Xbox controller is used to achieve a realistic control scheme. You have several control presets to choose from. I highly recommend the one where the triggers are used for throttle and brake. While the buttons are pressure sensitive you will get a much finer adjustment and precision with the triggers. In my particular control scheme I had the X and A buttons assigned to front and rear brakes while the left trigger applies both brakes simultaneously. The B button is a rear look view that is great for checking your “six” and the Y button cycles through the various and amazing camera views.

I was surprised how well this game captures the disciplines of real motorcycle riding. Sure, there’s no substitute for a pair of handlebars, but by combining independent braking and by using the analog stick to shift your rider’s weight you have an uncanny ability to exert precise control over your bike. The training levels help you learn to shift your weight to perform wheelies and endos (wheelie on the front wheel), or use your brakes to do 180’s, 360’s, and burn-outs.

While these stunts have no place in a serious racing simulation they are the core elements of the arcade mode. Winning or placing in the top of the pack will award you a fixed amount of points, but you have the entire race to rack up large amounts of bonus points by sneaking in a wheelie, power slide, or burnout whenever possible.

The trick is to pull off these stunts without affecting your racing performance. You can lock your front wheel and rip off a 2,000-point burnout at the green light but doing so will probably put you at the back of the pack. You can ride a 4,000-point wheelie down the main stretch but you’d better have that front wheel on the ground when it comes time to make that next turn. You also get points for every bike you overtake and for completing stretches of the course without leaving the track.

Rider AI is very challenging but not “perfect”, and you will see the occasional biker dump his ride on a tight turn. But MotoGP is no pushover. There is no “rubber band” effect that slows the rest of the pack down when you fall behind, so you will have to earn every victory. This can be difficult in the shorter 3-lap races where a single crash will put you in dead last with almost no hope of regaining the lead. In arcade mode you are also on a checkpoint timer, so any more than two wrecks in a lap will pretty much guarantee a “restart”.

MotoGP offers more secrets and bonuses than any two other Xbox games combined. There are new bikes, riders, tracks, and assorted videos that you can unlock by playing all of the game modes at all three skill levels and by winning races or placing in the top three.

The overal production value is stunning. As you travel the world you are greeted by a short video showing some scenery and culture, then you are given a brief history on the track. When you finish a race you can unlock a highlight movie of the actual 2001 race that took place on that track. This is a great way to learn who the best racers are and possibly pick up some tips in their post-race interviews. You will also be amazed at how much the "real video" replays resemble the replays from the game.

The power of the Xbox is fully utilized to bring you realistic bump mapped textures, real-time lighting, and highly detailed bike and rider models fully articulated with stunning animation, all blurring by at 60fps. This is an impressive feat considering you have 20 detailed bikes on the screen, all approaching new levels of photo-realism.

The special effects are few, but everything that is present is totally realistic and perfectly rendered. The skies are gorgeous photo-quality backdrops with white puffy clouds in a sea of blue or brilliant shades of sunset red and orange. During rain races the sky gets dark and sinister with flashes of lightning and rumbling thunderclaps.

The lighting effects are where this game really shines. There are the traditional lens flare effects, which surprisingly don’t seem “forced”. Your view washes out when driving into the sun and darkens when you pass through shaded parts of the track. Every bike and rider casts a real-time shadow that stretches appropriately based on the angle of the sun. It just doesn’t get any more real than this.

You can pick from several camera modes during the race including three chase views and two first-person views. Each type of view includes two zoom levels. The first-person mode puts you behind the windscreen and handlebars while the nosecam view puts you on your headlight. While both of these views offer some very exciting perspectives and an amazing sensation of speed, they are quite unplayable. You simply don’t have enough “look ahead” to make informed turning decisions. There are also several races that take place in rain and the raindrops and spray from the other bikes realistically splatters the windscreen or the camera lens distorting your view.

The chase views are a more forgiving, but even the close chase view can become difficult at times. I ultimately opted for the far chase view, which gave me the best vantage point to remain competitive in what was already a very challenging game. Rain and spray hits the “virtual” lens in these modes as well, but it’s not nearly as obstructive as the first-person views. Regardless of which view you choose, they are all totally realistic and offer their own unique challenges.

There is a fabulous replay system that gives you a full VCR interface for ultimate control over the playback. You can view the action from 14 exciting cameras including traditional TV camera views and some other more unconventional angles. The replays are where you can really appreciate all the subtle details that went into this title – something you don’t have time to enjoy when you are screaming down the backstretch at 160mph.

I must also mention the huge library of special effects filters that can be unlocked by scoring a certain amount of points while racing. These can be toggled in the Extras menu and allow you to race in modes such as Comic, Emboss, Wire frame, and many others. I’ve tried a few of these modes and while most of them are purely a “gimmick”, I did find the Comic mode quite nice. It gave the game a nice cell-shaded anime style, almost creating an entirely new game.

The only negative thing I can possibly say about the graphics is that the tracks can become a bit stale after a few races. You might be visiting famous racetracks all over the world, but racing in the confines of a closed course you won’t be appreciating any native scenery. Grandstands look the same in Germany as they do in Japan. In fact, the only big difference between the various tracks was the changing color patterns on the rumble strips. A few of the tracks actual broke from their confines and included rolling hills and some trees. These were the most exciting.

Sound effects are excellent. The engines all sound quite realistic and are deafening when all 20 bikes are clustered together at the start of a race. Tires squeal when you burn out or spin around in a tight 180. There are even the cheers of the crowd as you race down through the grandstand area.

Everything is presented in a 5.1 Dolby Digital surround mix giving everything a very spatial quality. You can actually locate bikes coming up behind you by their sound placement in your speaker setup (assuming you have a compatible sound system). Sound is subtly altered by camera views. Engines are more muffled when playing from inside your helmet than when playing just above your exhaust pipe. One of the best and most startling sound effects had to be the thunderclaps during the rain races. They gave my subwoofer a real workout.

While ten tracks might not seem like a lot, you can unlock the mirror mode and reverse mode, which essentially gives you thirty tracks total. This might seem like a cheap way to milk more gameplay out of a title, but you’d be surprised how different these courses really are when you just flip them over or reverse direction.

The RPG stat system of your rider is a unique feature that I haven’t seen in any other racing game. Most games let you tweak your car by making parts upgrades, but this is the first game that rewards the driver for performing well during training and in the race.

MotoGP supports up to 4 players in split-screen mode or you can network up to 16 Xbox systems together with the link cable for some serious multiplayer racing action. As unlikely as it is to consider having 15 of your friends lug their TV and Xbox over to your house, it’s still nice that the support is there and it bodes well for when the Xbox goes online later this year.

The stunning visuals and gorgeous lighting effects set a new standard for photo-realistic gameplay, and the replays could easily be mistaken for network TV coverage. MotoGP is the most in-depth motorcycle racing game you can currently buy for any system, and the various skill levels and gameplay modes will appeal to gamers of all ages and interest levels.