Wednesday, May 28, 2003

Xbox - Moto GP review

| GAME FEATURES |

Developer : Climax

A.) 10 exciting, twisted, professional league tracks.

Publisher : THQ

B.) Nice looking graphics that take advantage of xbox hardware

Released on May 22, 2002

C.) Tight control seen only in NASCAR and grand prix games.

D.) The entire soundtrack is techno. Lame music. It is in high quality, but it's not the music I would look for in a grand prix game like this one. Not really good techno, but atleast it lets me listen to songs of the harddrive.

Type : Motorcycle Racing

I never owned a motorcycle racing game before. I've seen professional racing of this type on television. I figured that this game had to be a cross between Formula 1 World Racing and European stock car racing or "the Le Mans series" In MotoGP you get all the racers in the grand prix in 2001. The game features multible texture layers and looks more like the real thing. It hasn't become the ultimate racer for Xbox. But since xbox is low on high-quality racing titles, this game makes it seem all good.

Sometimes the Grand Motocycle Championship can alter games to what it feels is morally right. For example, if you drive a motorcycle on slippery conditions and you lean to far to the right on a sharp right corner, it'll throw you off your bike 10 feet infront of it wasting valuable seconds and since your in last place in the championship, you only have 10 seconds to cross start after the leader.(unless your in time trials, then your time getting to start is infinate) gives you even less time when you cross the start lap 2. What I do in this game is on curves coast until I'm 90% finishing with my turn before pressing A to accelerate. Sometimes brakes near the inner corner can save you speed and time just like the real championship races. But never brake too late or you'll overseer your bike which could mean fatal.

The training mode and the Grand Prix mode are the hardest modes in MotoGP. In training mode your bike has to swerve to the left (or right) to pass the cone and do a 180 around the last cone in 20 seconds or you repeat the process. This is not easy. In fact I never got pass it yet. It's best to do time trials until you can successfully stay on the pavement for 1 or 2 laps. The tracks, especially the replica of Le Mans, are full of sharp, dangerous, corners. In time trials, the game automatically loads your ghost (ghostly image that repeats the best lap time while you continue to race.) Racing yourself can be fun. When you leave your ghost by quitting, the ghost is saved on xbox's massive 8 GigaByte harddrive automatically.

Summing up Moto GP

Graphics

9.9

MotoGP has the best graphics I've seen in a racing title for Xbox. I seen Halo so I had to leave a point off ;) This game carries far in this area. It has cloudy days that look very detailed. The bikes themselves have several layers of detail on them. The game doesn't have any odd placed pixel or low resolution or deformed color. None at all! The rain can be really realistic while you race the game's 8 tournament tracks. It's incredible what the xbox can do. The sequel is also out.

Control

8.5

The control is loose. You must slow down before each curve to prevent oversteering. But this can easily be avoided in 3 to 4 hour practice in time trials.

Orginalism

10.0

This is the only professional motocycle racing game I tried. It comes with a load of options. The dynamic intro is cool. And the menu with the film capture of the real motogp in the background is a nice addition. The grand prix mode is well layed out (other then that it's medium hard) It is possible to tweak your bike to make it faster / slower, turner sharper or brake sooner. It's not as hardcore as BMX, but it is still hardcore racing, European style.

Sound Effects

8.0

The game features great engine sounds

Replayibly

10.0

I could come back to this game all the time. The time trials are really exciting. It could also be that I own 3 xbox titles and got sick of my dreamcast titles. Being my choice on any xbox game I give this game a perfect 10.

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