Review: MotoGP 09/10

There are two genres of video games that I rarely play – Real Time Strategy (RTS) games and licensed sports games. I say licensed because I do play sports games like SSX Tricky and racing games like Project Gotham. MotoGP 09/10 is a licensed motorcycle racing title that includes the 18 Grand Prix races across 14 countries as well as the bikes, teams, and rosters of the 2009 and soon, the 2010 MotoGP season. MotoGP 09/10 delivers a deep and involved motorcycle racing game that is a must have for MotoGP and racing fans everywhere.

There are several modes within the game – Career, Championship, Arcade, Time Trial, and Multiplayer. In Career Mode, you create your own rider and compete in the 125cc, 250cc, and 800cc circuits. You can customize your rider’s name, home track, rider number, and nationality as well as customize your helmet, uniform, and bike colors. There is a Tutorial Wildcard race to begin with and your career is launched. I felt that the tutorial was only helpful if you have prior knowledge about motorcycles and motorcycle racing. Since I have neither, the tips that were being shouted at me by my new Race Manager didn’t help me very much. Tips like “be careful not to wheelspin in the grass” had me yelling “Why?!?” at the TV. Your Race Manager will give you tips and encouragement throughout your career as well as in other modes. He is a jolly Scottish gent and there is no option to turn him off. Don’t get me wrong – my favorite accent in the world is a Scottish one – however, I felt like I was being yelled at by Shrek. What I found interesting is that as I started out in my career, I kind of sucked. I had a really hard time handling the bike, taking corners, and accelerating and braking at the appropriate times. My Race Manager kept telling me that I could used both my Front and my Rear brakes so I started to experiment with using each brake independently and together. As I progressed in my career, I was able to hire Press Officers who obtain Sponsorships, which earn me money for each race depending on what place I qualified for in the race and what place I took in the actual race. Later, I was able to hire Engineers who would research parts of my bike which in turn would enhance my bike’s performance. I finished my first 125cc career in 10th place overall…not too bad for a beginner but I still had no idea what I was doing and if I had really been playing the game “right”.

I started a new 125cc season and tried to really dig deep into the game’s inner mechanics. You race 18 different circuits within the season, hopefully placing high enough to earn you some cash. The cash goes towards paying your staff of Press Officers and Engineers and hopefully towards your own pocketbook. Standings are based on rider reputation which is determined by how well you do in the individual races. You earn reputation points by practicing and qualifying for a race as well as doing well in the actual race itself. You also earn points by overtaking other riders, slipstreaming other riders to overtake them, showboating by doing wheelies, endos, and burnouts as well as gesturing to the crowd or intimidating other riders. A dramatic finish will earn you points as well as getting clean section bonuses and clearing sections without making any mistakes. Being the fastest around the track will earn you a lap record and more rep points. While these are all very easy to achieve, points are deducted if you collide with other riders, crash your bike, or when you are overtaken by other riders. Deductions are going to happen so it’s up to you to rack up the points when you can. Throughout the race there are racing gates that if all are passed through, will earn you a perfect racing line and points toward your reputation. Every race will offer an optional objective like hitting an average speed, passing a particular rider, or sticking close to the racing line to name a few. Completing the objective will earn more points towards your reputation.

The racing line is a guide to where you should position yourself on the track and gives you hints as to when and where to apply the brakes. If the line is red, you will want to slow down and green implies you are going at a speed that can navigate the line. This guide is present by default and can be turned off in the settings menu, however, I found it helpful especially with the braking hints. I tend to keep the pedal to the metal – or my finger on the trigger – when I play ANY racing games. I only recently discovered the brakes in racing games. As you progress, you can hire more staff and get more active sponsorship slots to earn more money. I chose to keep one Press Officer and the rest of my staff as Engineers so that I could upgrade my bike faster. The research system isn’t quite as straight forward as I would have liked it to be but as I kept with it, I started completing certain parts of the bike and noticed a marked improvement in my racing. Suddenly, the game started to get serious and so was I. Not only was I practicing each and every race but I was also qualifying. Slowly, as I got more accustomed to the controls and how they worked and as the research improved the way my bike handled, I was qualifying in the top ten, top five, and towards the end of my second season, I was qualifying in first place for almost every race. I was colliding less, although the AI was a bit “rubberband” which made not colliding almost impossible. From the get go, the AI riders stick to the racing line like glue and you will do nothing but collide with them throughout the entire game. I had to make conscious effort to not collide with them but it came at a cost of placing behind one or two riders so I later concentrated on staying on the track, slipstreaming, and hitting all the racing gates to acquire more points. After a while though, I was never more than two spots from first and on a few occasions, I was in first place with more than a 5 second lead over the rider in second place. No need to worry about collisions when there aren’t any riders near you! This constant improvement was achieved both from playing the game a lot as well as trying to research the bike to improve its handling and overall performance. Once I understood all this, I got really into it – yelling for Norm to come and watch the amazing replays of my race and texting him with my overall standings. At the end of each race, you can watch a replay however, you cannot save the replay. This was disappointing as I wanted to show my first place race to my family at the next family get together. I ended up finishing in 2nd place overall in my second run though of the 125cc season circuit. Not bad…

As you do well in the races, you will also start to unlock riders and bikes to use in the Championship, Arcade, and Multiplayer modes. While you could use any class in the aforemention modes, you had to first complete the 125cc Career in order to begin your 250cc Career and complete the 250cc Career in order to play the 800cc Career. I think it would’ve been nicer to have all three open at the beginning but the bigger the engine, the more difficult the handling, so maybe it was a little like training wheels on a bike.

One of the coolest features in the game was the Second Chance option. If you crash your bike, take a turn too wide, or make any mistake that costs you your place, you can press the Select button which opens up the Second Chance controls, which allow you to rewind your actions and try again. It’s like having the Dagger of Time from The Prince of Persia: Sands of Time granting you the ability to go back in time and fix your mistakes. This comes at a cost to your reputation points so keep that in mind when you use it. I used this feature a lot. It’s only available in the actual race so if you crash while qualifying, you’re out of luck. You can even customize your bike before every race, choosing the tyre compound and even adjusting the ABS strength and traction control. I dabbled with this but didn’t really get it, so I just stuck with whatever worked for me.

Championship mode allows you to play a full season with one of the real world riders. You can select any bike class and any rider and bike that has been unlocked.

In Arcade mode, you have a set amount of time to complete as much of the race as you can. You earn time by performing maneuvers like Overtaking, Slipstreaming, Racing Line Gates, and Clean Sectors. Any extra time you have earned is added to your total time for the next racing round but if you do poorly, your time will go down.

Time Trial mode challenges you to set the best time record at a circuit. After you complete your first lap, you can have a Ghost Rider which follows the Racing Line you took on your previous lap. You can use this ghost rider to help improve you times. In addition, you can upload your ghosts for others to download and you can download other player’s racing lines and see where you stand with other players across the globe.

In Multiplayer mode, you can opt to play splitscreen local co-op or over the Playstation Network. MotoGP 09/10 supports 20-player online races however, due to either my connection or the game’s servers, I was unable to play online. Every time I tried, I got to the lobby and was able to choose my rider and then I would get booted out. This happened every time I tried, so unfortunately, I wasn’t able to try it out. I did get to play some splitscreen with a friend of mine who rides motorcycles. I happened to have kicked his butt, however, I had been playing the game for a while and that was his first time trying. In Splitscreen, you can create matches and play with friends. While it is fun to play with others, it’s not necessarily a game that one can just pick up a controller and play. There is a bit of a learning curve, but if you are willing to take a little time and lose a few races, it’ll be worth your while in the end.

To my surprise, I really enjoyed the game and it’s one of the first sports game that I have really put in some time into. I like racing games, so that helped a lot. While I thought the graphics could have been a little better, overall, they were pretty impressive and had a far draw distance so there was never a worry of a barricade popping up when you got closer to a turn. The crash graphics weren’t as impressive as I hoped but then again, I’m also not interested in realistic motorcycle crashes, not in this game anyways. I really enjoyed the game’s soundtrack which is made up of about 14 tracks. The music is in an upbeat Euro-beat style that I thought fit the game very well. I only wish that there was more variety. I would hear the same song over and over again in my longer racing sessions. There is no way to advance the tracks or build a custom playlist. A jukebox mode would’ve been great as well as the ability to use your own music tracks to create a custom soundtrack. In June, you will be able to download the 2010 season which will feature new bike classes, new tracks, and all the team and stat updates. This DLC will be available through free DLC packs. If you are a fan of motorcycles or racing games, you will want to play MotoGP 09/10. While it is not perfect, it provides a fun and rich racing experience you won’t want to miss.