MotoGP 09/10

Score: 75%
ESRB: Everyone
Publisher: Capcom
Developer: Monumental Games
Media: DVD/1
Players: 1 - 2; 2 - 20 (Online)
Genre: Racing/ Online

Graphics & Sound:

MotoGP 09/10 features the kind of visuals you'd expect. You've got bikes, bikers, crowds, Mother Nature, and not a whole lot else. There's just enough to get the job done, and it won't turn any heads, for better or worse. Animations are solid, for the most part. The screen blurs and rattles when you tuck in for a straightaway, which is nice. I don't really like the way bikers bail when they try to turn too hard. Mind you, it's not the fact that it happens -- it's the odd posture they assume the second they fall. However, there's something risky and exciting about hitting a turn at just the right angle. It doesn't matter whether you're seeing it on television or in a game; watching bikers put their knees to work in high-speed turns is always fun to watch.

Licensed soundtracks can occasionally make or break the presentation. In the case of MotoGP 09/10, the soundtrack does neither of those. However, it's definitely on the good side of things -- there's nothing obnoxious here. The bikes, on the other hand, lack personality. Maybe I'm naïve when it comes to this kind of racing, but the Power Wheels Suzuki Quad I drove in my early years sounded more menacing than these high-powered machines. Still, you won't feel like you're listening to an army of pissed-off mosquitoes. On to voicework. I didn't know that Captain Obvious spoke with a thick Scottish brogue. Let's be frank: the announcer isn't on the same plane of annoying as the likes of Burnout Paradise's DJ Atomika, but he gets annoying much faster than any Scotsman should.

Gameplay:

The meat of the MotoGP 09/10 experience is its fully-developed Career Mode. Unless you are constantly itching for an online fix, this is where you'll spend most of your time with the game. By pushing a racer of your own creation through Career Mode's schedule, you'll get lost in a flood of unlockables and increase your reputation. Your reputation is determined and changed by a number of governing factors. Naturally, winning is one of those key factors. Occasionally, you'll be given a dynamic objective to complete mid-race. These objectives range from rider intimidation to showing off. Regardless of the event's outcome, you will be given a grade at the end. The game adds and subtracts all of the small victories and foibles you achieved through the race and compresses them into a letter grade. It encourages you to work towards cleaning up your races, and the incentives are appealing. The more your reputation grows, the more involving the experience becomes. You can hire a team to do handle all the bureaucratic and engineering (read: upgrade) minutiae, but you'll have to know what you want out of them and be mindful of the fact that you're paying them out of your own pocket. This part of the game succeeds largely because it's constantly rewarding you with new content.

On the track, there's a lot you can do while you're hitting the gas, hitting the brakes, and going horizontal for the corners. Since the driving lines are tough to hit (more on that later), the game encourages you to at least try and drive through three gates that mark the entrances, apexes, and exits of each turn. If you can manage to get any of them right, you'll be rewarded at the end of the event. You can also choose to showboat while driving past crowds. Many of the showboating moves force you to relinquish control of the throttle. Popping a several meter long wheelie is the best way to showboat without potentially compromising your position.

Difficulty:

MotoGP 09/10 offers a persistent challenge that doesn't always feel realistic. However, what it lacks in authenticity is made up for in the satisfaction of a hard-earned victory. You might find yourself nailing a sharp turn, overtaking a large number of competitors, and tearing off into an easy straightaway. However, your opponents find ways to creep up on you -- and I'm not convinced these methods are entirely legit. The speed at which they catch up leads me to believe that the game's artificial intelligence is taking advantage of what you can't always see. It's not a serious problem, but it definitely affects the difficulty level.

This game also makes use of a mechanic that has been making its way into all sorts of racing games, from Forza Motorsport 3 to Codemasters' fantastic DiRT 2. Races take quite some time in MotoGP 09/10, and one critical bail can ruin your chances of having a spot on the podium. Luckily, the Second Chance mechanic gives you another shot at whatever spot you may have goofed on. There's a catch, though: using Second Chances detract from the grade you receive at the end of each event.

Game Mechanics:

MotoGP 09/10 is a standard bike racer at heart, but the way it plays doesn't hold up terribly well under scrutiny. If you're a seasoned racer who has experience with realistic racers like Forza Motorsport and Gran Turismo, you will find that the suggested driving lines do indeed represent the ideal path for your bike to travel. In real life, bike racers would likely be able to ace all the turns while using these same lines. However, the handling in MotoGP 09/10 doesn't feel suited for hitting the lines. Easing into turns is a very difficult trick to learn, and tearing into them with near-reckless abandon tends to be a viable strategy most of the time. Again, I might not be knowledgeable about this kind of stuff, but you can lean left and right at speeds that would likely cause real bikers to get into serious accidents. This is where I believe the game fails its goals as a simulation. While you are rewarded for making good use of your front and rear brakes, you are not punished for not doing so. Most of the sharp turns in other bike racing games scared the crap out of me, but the ones in Moto GP 09/10's didn't faze me in the slightest.

I take MotoGP 09/10 for what it is: a flawed but fun bike racer. It's certainly not the best of its kind, nor is it the best you'll have ever played. However, if you have a bit of patience and are always jonesing for the latest in bike racing, MotoGP 09/10 will do you right.

-FenixDown, GameVortex Communications
AKA Jon Carlos

MotoGP 09/10

Graphics & Sound:

Gameplay:

Difficulty:

Game Mechanics:

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