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Seven wins straight. It's almost unthinkable that anyone could pull off the perfect MotoGP season by winning every single race, but in the here and now, with 11 races to go, that's exactly what Marc Márquez could achieve. He's this year's defending champion, and despite strong competition from Rossi, Pedrosa and Lorenzo - the latter of whom won more races last season that any other rider - it looks like the new ace up Repsol Honda's sleeve is going to walk it. This leaves the fight for second place as the more interesting proposition, especially with so many contracts about to expire.
It's fair to say that MotoGP is going through a transition period, and in the world of officially licensed racing games, the same can be said of Milestone. This Italian developer has given us more two-wheeled titles than anyone else in the business. For a time, it was the studio behind the SBK series, but since reconnecting with the MotoGP licence in 2013, Milestone has stuck to what it does best - and that's delivering its sophisticated style of semi-simulation riding physics beneath increasingly dated graphics.
Jun 06, 2019 MotoGP 19 is a huge leap in the right direction, with this being an excellent title for the fans of MotoGP. Milestone’s making the right steps, and their next entry could be the de facto MotoGP experience if they keep trending upward.
Thankfully, MotoGP 14 on the PlayStation 4 is a marked improvement over its technically accomplished yet visually bland predecessors. It's never going to challenge the likes of Forza or Gran Turismo, but what Milestone has achieved on its tighter budget is still worthy of praise. The bikes cast multiple shadows as you hurtle down the main Losail straight at the dead of night. The rider animations extend to some epic highside saves when you gun it too quickly out of a corner. And the tracks - while far from showstoppers - feel noticeably less static.
This all adds up to a more commanding presentation - yet, as refreshing as it is to play a MotoGP game that looks more contemporary, the handling model will always lie at the heart of the Milestone experience. In this regard, MotoGP 14 follows a similar line to the past games. With the simulation and AI settings maxed out, you'll have to nail every apex, pass and shift to stand any chance of success. But if you lower the bar while turning some of the riding aids on, the margin for error becomes much more lenient.
Compare MotoGP 14 with the real-world sport of motorbike racing and you'll end up with a long list of irregularities, but to do so would miss the point entirely. It's about striking an even balance between realism and gameplay, and although the braking distances and off-track excursions may raise the odd eyebrow, the art of feathering the throttle through a sharp left-hander feels perfectly poised on the DualShock 4. There's even been a marked improvement in the fallibility of the rider AI. They now make occasional mistakes rather than racing like a pack of autonomous robots.
In terms of available modes, MotoGP 14 delivers all the usual suspects while throwing some interesting extras into the mix. Instant Race, Grand Prix, Championship and Time Attack all function exactly as stated, and with a generous spread of five rosters and 18 tracks - including the new Termas de Río Hondo circuit in Argentina - the only notable omission is Michele Pirro. But with a healthy Cal Crutchlow both in the game and on the box, you're free to take Ducati to the top of the table in a run of Casey Stoner proportions.
This 'what if?' mentality is a big part of the game's draw and it's refreshing to see it taken beyond the returning Career mode. Making a rider from a limited selection of faces, starting them as a Moto3 wildcard and then slowly climbing the ranks until they're the premier class champion is all much the same as before, but MotoGP 14 is given a bit more personality by two new modes: Real Events 2013 and Challenge the Champions.
Inspired by last year's more eventful season, Real Events 2013 tasks you with recreating and even bettering the key moments from each race. For the opening race in Qatar, you have to finish third or better as Rossi after a dodgy overtake leaves you considerably behind, and when you make it to Aragón in Spain, you have to maintain your position as Pedrosa after a collision with Márquez knocks out your traction control system. If you're the kind of MotoGP fan that watches every race without fail, then reliving these moments is a genuine thrill - especially when you set the difficulty to a notch above your comfort zone.
The same is also true of the Challenge the Champions mode that harks back to the simpler times of 500cc two-stroke engines. It takes all the riders from the MotoGP 13 Champions DLC, adds in six new faces (including Max Biaggi and Noriyuki Haga) and then throws down the gauntlet with 17 challenges. A few of these are fictional - such as a first-place finish from Freddie Spencer after starting from last on the grid - but most are based on true events.
The only disappointing thing about this pair of nostalgic modes is that they're fairly short-lived. There are 34 challenges between them, but aside from increasing the AI difficulty, there's little in the way of replay value. This makes the inclusion of the redundant playable Safety Car mode more grating. Milestone's time would've been better spent coming up with more challenges rather than shoehorning a BMW M4 Coupé into a motorbike racing game. I wouldn't go so far as to call it offensive, but it's surprising how badly the car handles when you consider the studio's work on the World Rally Championship series.
Made in Poland but not by CD Projekt Red.
Mercifully, the Beemer is restricted to Time Attack mode and its own online leaderboards. The rest of the online features are reserved for the main two-wheeled attractions and include everything from the returning Grand Prix to the new Split Times mode. The former includes all the usual options for up to 12 players - including whether you want to enforce Pro physics or turn the collisions on or off - while the latter divides the track into eight sectors and awards victory to the player who can lay down the best time in the most sectors.
Add the graphical overhaul, refined handling and experimental modes together and you end up with a racer that feels much more competitive that its immediate predecessors. Milestone has a habit of releasing motorcycling sequels that hold little distinction outside of the yearly livery changes, but in MotoGP 14, it's not relying solely on the draw of the licence and the pull of its physics. That doesn't mean it's comparable to Márquez in terms of getting everything right, but if ever there was a game made by MotoGP fans for MotoGP fans, this is definitely it.
8 /10
About this game. DeveloperMilestone. PublisherNamco. Version reviewedPS4. Also available onPC, Xbox 360, PS3, PS Vita,. Price$39.99 (PC, PS Vita), $49.99 (Xbox 360, PS3), $59.99 (PS4).
Get it hereRetail or download. Review copy fromPublisherMotoGP 14 is a game of two halves. On the one hand we have fine, high-quality motorcycle racing that you just can't get anywhere else. On the other, we have visuals that look like they're from a previous generation, clumsy presentation, and the occasional glitch.However, despite its bugbears, I'm a fan of this officially licensed game of the MotoGP World Championships. Mostly due to the fact that I love motorcycles, and developer Milestone has done a quite remarkable job of capturing the feel of riding one.When riding on two wheels, finding the right line into a turn, making micro-adjustments mid-corner, and then gassing out at just the right time requires a lot more precision than driving a car, and this is what this game is all about.
Of course, on the absolute limit, both require a high degree of skill to control, but even so, you at least have an extra two wheels to rely on when driving a car. You're not going to highside or lowside your auto.Even with assists turned on, MotoGP isn't a game for novices.
Its racing is challenging even on low settings, and the game requires a good degree of practice before you can even think about stepping foot on the podium. That's because there's less margin for error than other, generally more forgiving auto-racers. In this game, it only takes a few mistakes and you become a backmarker for the rest of the race.Initially I found this somewhat frustrating, before realizing that this was simply stemming from a feeling of entitlement I've gotten from playing too much Gran Turismo and Forza, where wins come far, far easier – particularly in the early races. I started out a novice in MotoGP and was finishing amongst the middle of a 21-bike pack, race after race. However, once I'd changed my mindset about the game, and approached it with a more long-term view, it actually began to feel much more like a realistic racing game.
MotoGP isn't here to flatter me - I really have to work to win, rather than simply turn up, twist the throttle, and hop onto the podium.MotoGP has an impressive array of racing options, including a career mode (where you earn rep, switch teams, look for your dream ride, and so on), GP mode, individual races, and even a challenge mode where you can play through key moments of the previous MotoGP season and attempt to either re-create or best the results of that race. Couple that with reasonably comprehensive rider customization options, and you have a broad spread of play options that give the game a high degree of legs – assuming you're a dedicated bike racer.While the racing is top-notch, the game feels somewhat let down by its audio-visuals and general presentation. It just feels a little low-budget. The bikes and riders look great, and the recreation of the MotoGP tracks are quite impressive in terms of feeling authentic. However, the ambient textures and general atmospherics come across as feeling a little last generation - much closer to those in Gran Turismo 6 than DriveClub.It's not like they're poor, but the game seems to be missing the subtle details and touches the new generation of machines are capable of. Almost like the team was told to make sure the game featured all the 'must haves,' but weren't given the time to add 'nice to haves,' like more complex light filtering, richer building textures, and more organic-feeling trackside grass and tree textures. It almost feels like everything was rendered very cleanly, was given a quick once-over to add some dust, grime and noise, but didn't have quite enough time put into it to make it look truly lifelike.
I guess that's my issue with the game. It just looks too much like a computer game – accurate and faithful though its modeling may be. It's one of those games where if you squint a little, it looks perfect - but get too close, and you can see exactly how it's made.Sound is similarly lacking. I'm glad there was an option to turn off the menu music, because after a while I think its repetitive nature would have driven me nuts. The motorcycle engine noise is also pretty feeble. It has the right tone, but it just lacks the kind of visceral scream and oomph that you hear emanating from a real MotoGP motorcycle.But all that is easy to overlook once you get into the game and start racing. I initially used a third-person view, as that gave let me see exactly what my bike and rider were doing, enabled me to power-slide out of corners, and avoid spills when I ran wide.
Once I'd gotten used to the way the bike worked, I switched to a first-person view, and that really took the action up a notch. There's a real feeling of speed, and because the bikes are so fast, and it's so easy to fall off, you feel like you're always racing on the edge – because you essentially are.
That makes it feel very exciting, and really, this is where the game works best – and indeed is viewed best. At high speed, you barely have time to look at everything around you, and as a consequence, you don't see any flaws: it's all just thrilling, high-speed two-wheel racing.MotoGP is fast and challenging, and not for the fainthearted. I can't imagine there are many non-motorcycle fans who'd be interested in playing this, but if you do like racing, this provides as much excitement as any other racer out there. It's just a shame that it's let down by its audio-visual presentation.
Were MotoGP on par with the likes of Forza and DriveClub, it'd be quite spectacular. It's still great – it just doesn't always look it. VisualsMotoGP's tracks feel authentically recreated, and the motorcycles and riders look great. However, ambient trackside objects and buildings lack detail and look last generation.SoundWeak on the whole. Engine noise feels shrill and reedy, and lacks a visceral feel. The music is unfortunately repetitive.InterfaceClunky and last-gen.
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Or indeed the gen before the gen before last. It's all old-school clumsy menus.Lasting appealDespite being let down in other areas, MotoGP's racing action is terrific, and that's what counts.
It's challenging, and has enough options and modes to keep racing fans busy for months.MotoGP 14 delivers exciting, challenging and surprisingly deep motorcycle racing action. It's audio-visuals feel disappointingly last-generation, however.4/5.
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