Lawrence.com

Simulation racing games, like any sports game, have to straddle a fine line. On one hand, they have to be authentic enough appease to their core audience – in this case, gearheads and tuners. On the other hand, the gameplay has to be accessible enough to appeal to a wider audience, being as forgiving as possible without completely losing its grip on the spirit of the sport.

MotoGP 09/10 does a decent job of maintaining this balance, although the game isn’t nearly as polished as others in the genre.

MotoGP’s single-player experience includes three modes: championship, arcade and career. Championship mode is akin to playing a season in Madden without handling any player/personnel decisions — it’s straight-up racing without any of the bells and whistles of developing your bike, racing style, and team.

Arcade mode includes a similar, no-frills set up with a twist. To continue and complete any given race, you must earn points for racing cleanly and quickly, lest your time run out prior to crossing the finish line. Neither of these modes is particularly satisfying on its own, but do serve as a decent “one-off” after playing through the real draw of the game, Career mode.

In Career mode, you start as a beginner in the 125cc class, travelling the tracks of the world to make your name in the circuit. Initially, you must earn enough money and reputation to hire press officers and engineers. As you hire staff, the press officers bring in sponsors, while the engineers research new means to make your bike ride faster and smoother.

As you progress, it becomes necessary to earn more money and reputation in order to hire better staff, which, in turn, can give you greater success on the track. For those unfamiliar with tuning (i.e., me), the game does a great job of explaining what the modifications do for you in a race. The benefits of hiring and firing sponsors are purely monetary, but it is difficult to compare what you’re getting from existing sponsors to the new opportunities available.

The controls in each of the modes fall into the category of “simple to learn, difficult to master.” There is no standalone tutorial, although the early stages of the career mode do a good job of teaching you the basics of both the controls and the physics of the game. For fans of arcade-style racers, the learning curve can be steep if you, like me, tend to forget about braking and observing the race line. The game’s HUD supplies you with an anxiety-producing amount of information, from your bike’s speed to the status of your tires to your location on the track. There is a lot going on and, as you overtake and/or crash into your opponents, it can become distracting.

Unfortunately, the replay value in the single-player game is achieved through unlocking. In order to unlock faster racing classes and popular drivers and bikes, you have to complete the 125cc classes in each mode. While this does help ease the learning curve for inexperienced racing gamers, each mode includes multiple races that take a significant time investment to complete.

The multiplayer component is a bare-bones affair, offering only arcade and career racing. While you can customize the kind of race you would like to join, it difficult to find a match that met my minimal criteria. Once you find a match, however, the online races do not lose anything in translation, maintaining the speed and accurate controls of the offline experience. Assuming the game garners a healthier online community, the game’s replay value could easily be extended. Additional DLC is planned throughout the 2010 racing season, although it was unavailable at the time of this review.

The game’s presentation, in terms of both its graphics and sound, is somewhat lacking. While the visual effects are rendered realistically, they feel featureless when flying by at 150 miles per hour, although the weather effects are handled well and add atmosphere to the race. In addition, any real-time damage to the bikes was visually unnoticeable. The sound effects are largely limited to the high-pitched purr of the bikes, and the soundtrack is comprised of an odd mixture of Euro-pop and techno tracks. The limited song selection can be annoying, as you’ll hear the same song repeatedly in a gaming session.

Although it lacks the presentation of premier racing sims like Gran Turismo or Forza and the “pick-up-and-play” mentality of Burnout or Need for Speed, MotoGP 09/10 offers a good mixture of challenge, tuning, and speed. For fans of any type of non-kart racing game, it is definitely worth a look.

Graphics: 8.0

Sound: 7.5

Gameplay: 8.0

First Play: 8.0

Replay Value: 7.5



Overall: 7.75