MotoGP 2020

This game was reviewed on Playstation 5.

I will never forget my time with the Xbox online starter kit that had the little headphones for online chat and what I must say was the best example of a great online game from little British developers Climax and that was MotoGP as a whole. The handling, the speed and feeling of that game was head and shoulders better than any other Bike game that had been before.

Well, we are now around 18 years later so as D:ream once said: "Things can only get better".

The MotoGP licence has been with Italian developers Milestone for the last few years. During this time the games have slowly got more fleshed out with features and options to keep any dedicated gamer playing, well let's see what Milestone have in store for us in this year's game. The first thing that you see on the title screen is options for a quick race, multiplayer, career and historical challenges. Now, let's get into it and see if this has improved upon the ok but not spectacular game that was MotoGP 19.

Straight off the bat, the developers have added new fuel usage and tyre wear to the game and this adds a very nice level of tactical play to the proceedings.

Does quick race really need any explaining? You can just pick the bike and rider then the track to race and you are off. The historical mode gives you a lot of the best riders and bikes from years gone by and you select one of three challenges all based on skill. This is a fun little mode as it's a bit different to how you play the game normally. Multiplayer, again this needs no introduction the only thing I can really say is that before release is that the game runs smooth and no glitches and although its very vanilla at the moment the devs have plenty of time to add more into the mix. The main meat on the game code is the career mode and here you can start right at the top of the tree and best team or start at the bottom and work your way through all the formulas.

As you play through and complete races you can add points into a skill tree but this isn't as user friendly as it needs to be, the ideas are there but maybe because the game only had just over 10 months of development time maybe some ideas just didn't or couldn't be fleshed out full? But all in all the game has enough modes and as the game came out early compared to the normal release schedule the developers have promised that some other modes will get added in May and June there will be the Red Bull Rookies Cup and MotoE respectively. So again the game is full of content but what's content if the game plays poorly?

On the matter of graphics, while not outstanding, they do the job and look good in motion. There is a single negative I noticed and maybe because I played this on a launch PS4, the textures sometimes took around a second or more to pop into clarity. The handling that was mentioned as been improved is this is the case it must have been so bad last year, here the amount of time the bike takes to turn as you have to first lean the rider and again to turn the opposite direction you have to get the rider up and then over to the other side before the bike will turn that way. So although this might be more realistic I much preferred the MotoGP game from 2012 as and yes that was much more 'arcady' but here it just feels way too sluggish and slow. Now, this might be me as I don't normally play bike games and feels so foreign from a car-based racing game.

What we have is a game full of content, with a few new features and additions to the core gameplay and for and this sounds bad but for fans of the series you will find so much to love here but for anyone casual or not into your bikes then what we have here is an average game that needs time for tweaks improvements before 2021 will be ready.

David Cameron