MotoGP 17 review

MotoGP 17 review

MotoGP 17

Italy, besides Gianluigi Buffon, Italian cuisine and the Omerta developer Milestone always comes to mind. With five bike racing games in the last year, you could say that they are specialised in the genre.  MotoGP fans will be thrilled about this yearly returning game but what about the others? Let’s find out in this MotoGP 17 review.

THE GOOD

  • MotoGP 17 is the Fifa-game for MotoGP fans, it has the same care and attention for licensing. With all the known MotoGP tracks, bike manufacturers and famous riders. It s a complete package, made with love for fans.
  • Learning curve in mind, the actual gameplay isn’t bad. It is truly something different and racing fans will get quite a few hours of racing fun.
  • The game has two different career modes, one with a focus on the driver and another one that lets you manage your own team.  That last one feels really fresh and actually fun to take all the tasks into consideration. Hiring riders and keeping them happy, having enough funds for research and facilities, without a doubt the Managerial Career is something great.

MIXED FEELINGS

  • The learning curve for taking turns is one of the highest I ever seen in a racing game. I played the five previous games from Milestone so I kinda knew what to expect, even after playing so much before I still had to “get into it”, especially because the braking is a little different and the rider weight is another new crucial feature.  That said, the ability to realistically brake front or rear is a great feature.  Anyway, the handling isn’t bad but it takes a long time to master it, Milestone could have made it a little bit easier and still give players an immersive experience.

THE BAD

  • Having all the official tracks is great but not having the visual richness to make them come alive is a serious issue. MotoGP 17 looks bad, there is no denying that. Animations from engineers are laughable and everything looks ghostly. Crisp textures or detail in environments are all missing in action. Underwhelming, sadly enough.
  • Something the developer has never heard of is antialiasing. Even the menu has jaggies everywhere. It should be a lot better, and there is simply no excuse why the Xbox One version looks like a turd.
  • Could there be anything worse than the visuals? I’m afraid so. The Sound is laughable, bike sounds have been improved since last time but I still get the impression that they used lawn mowers. For some reason the game lacks any sort of environmental sounds while racing, sound is such an important factor and it makes the game a lot more boring than it should be.

MotoGP 17 is a mixed experience, visual and sound are bad. No other words for it, luckily the gameplay can hold everything together so it doesn’t become a disaster. And in the end that’s all you need to have a game that people can enjoy.