MotoGP 21
Despite technical wobbles, MOTOGP 21 justifies another annual release.
Are you new to motorcycle racing games? Well let me tell you this: MotoGP 21 is going to be really difficult. But what am I saying – perhaps you’re a perennial hundred-hour player in Milestone’s long-running bike sim, with every braking zone from Losail turn 1 to Valencia’s Adrian Campos corner memorised. Guess what: MotoGP 2 is still going to be really difficult.
This series has taken a turn simwards since its move to UnrealEngine in 2018, but this year’s release represents the most noticeable shift in difficulty and realism in years. In particular, changes to suspension and braking make themselves felt in every corner entry and apex, demanding a different approach than last year’s game asked of you. And if you didn’t play any of last year’s game: oh boy…
But let’s zoom out a bit, because being a modern licensed racing title, there are depths to plumb here that extend way beyond the MotoGP licence and its associated circuits. The main course Milestone offers you is a career mode in which your custom rider graduates from Moto3 through Moto2 and finally to the big leagues – or just picks a ride in the fastest category as a rookie, your call.
In any event, you’re given RPG-like levels of control over your team, earning upgrade points by ticking off objectives in practice sessions and then spending them on bike development. This time you’re even assigning specific members of staff to each upgrade project based on their specialisms.
All that inter-team tweaking can be rewarding over the long term, particularly if you take MotoGP 21 up on its offer to run a completely new team from scratch. There’s not enough here to prevent annualised release fatigue, though.
ON YOUR BIKE
That’s where the on-track changes come in. However good you were at MotoGP 20, you’re going to have to completely revise your braking technique here, because the physics changes have a profound effect in those few hundred metres before the apex. It’s controller-smashingly easy to apply too much front brake pressure and tip your weight too far forwards, ending up in either a stoppie or a lock-up that sends you sailing past the racing line.
The feeling and timing of shifting your rider’s weight from one side of the bike to the other is slower, more precarious and more believable now, too. And with those two new facets of the handling are combined, MotoGP 21 asks you to think one turn ahead, in a very real sense.
The frustration is real, then, but the rewards are plentiful. For anyone who cared about realism in the pre-Unreal Engine MotoGPs, the ability to constantly tweak your speed and trajectory with taps of the brake or throttle were an immersion killer. The last few games have been working up to a handling model which demands you pick a line and either stick with it or upset your bike, and this year Milestone achieves it.
But there’s trouble in this paradise of two-wheeled poise and balletic gliding from apex to apex. That trouble takes its most noticeable form in the AI riders, who employ some very odd tactics including: constantly wiggling very slightly from side to side on straights, crashing 90% of the time in a particular turn at Assen, and never taking a long lap penalty. They also reset to the track straight after crashing, so if you have the new bike recovery mechanic enabled, you’ll spend ten seconds running your rider over to his bike and picking it back up while any other fallers are already three turns up the road.
Something’s changed in the lighting, too, which makes this year’s game appear flatter and duller than the last, while the tyre spray from wet races has a distracting flicker.
You should buy MotoGP 21 anyway, though, if you have even a sliver of interest in the exploits of Quartararo, Mir, Vinales, Rossi, and the gang. Its meaty career mode can hold you for months, and the uncompromising handling model holds a fascination all of its own.
The frustration is real, then, but the rewards are plentiful.