YouGamers.com

Reviews

MotoGP 07

If the actual MotoGP series, the premier motorbike sport, was based on the number of video games based on it, then it would be a single entry field. Unlike car-based sports titles, there's a complete dearth of proper bike racing games but THQ's appropriately-named MotoGP series has been rolling along for six years now, with nobody to race against. Having skipped a revision ('06) on the PC, the two wheeled blast returns to the PC.

Strictly speaking, MotoGP on the PC began in 1999 with Microprose's GP500 but we were still in the 500cc 2-stroke days of the motorsport; the change to the 990cc 4-stroke beasts came in 2002 and the first of THQ's MotoGP games was launched. Successful and popular, it provided motorbike fans with a good attempt at simulating the sport on a computer. Unlike cars, bikes are much harder to model realistically; this is because the rider (body mass, position, use of limbs, etc) plays a significant portion in how the vehicle hands, and this just cannot be easily replicated on a keyboard, gamepad or joystick (and this also applies to the independent front and rear brakes and twist-grip accelerator). Inevitably, regardless of any claims of simulation, bike games are pretty much arcade in nature.

Climax Studios, the long-standing MotoGP developers clearly realised this a good while back and each release in the series has incorporated more and more "arcade features," in addition to the standard reproduction of the actual motorsport. For example, MotoGP 3 introduced a new "Extreme Mode" - road bikes, hammering around road-based tracks - but more about that later. The titles have always been cross-platform and each successive release has seen larger and larger concessions towards the console gamer, for better and worse. Unfortunately, it's definitely for the worse in 07: for example, there are no anti-aliasing options, controls cannot be configured in Vista and the manual can only best be described as a promotion pamphlet (it lacks all kinds of explanations and in-game images).

Training consists of 5 pointless tasks - why can't they take place on a real track?

Challenges are not only something to aim at completing but they help you with the tricky parts of the track and earn your ability points.

Vista users should be warned about the control issues with MotoGP 07 now - with Windows XP, one can alter the keyboard configuration or use a wide variety of gamepads or controllers; however, with the Microsoft's latest operating system, all of that goes out of the window. You can't alter the keys (so you're left with having directional and body control on the cursor keys, leading to aching cramp in your hand very quickly) and controller support is much more limited; if you joystick or gamepad doesn't support XInput, you're stuffed. If you have a Microsoft Xbox 360 controller for the PC, though, then everything is just fine and dandy - in fact, it's the best device to use for the game. Gee, I wonder why that is...

Page 1: IntroductionPage 2: Gameplay and FeaturesPage 3: Racing and multiplayerPage 4: Graphics and HardwarePage 5: Final thoughts & Scores

Related Stuff

Tags