Trigger Finger

Let’s make something clear from the start. I never watch motorbike racing, not on TV, not at any events, I don’t own a motorbike, and I have ridden one only a few times. Thus I am no expert on realism, handling, or on the teams and riders.

So why do I find the Moto GP series so enthralling?

The first I played of the Moto GP series was like many people the demo version with the original Xbox. It was a fine demonstration of what Xbox Live was bringing to the gaming world. 16 players hurling abuse at each other whilst hammering round a bend at 206mph when 207mph would send you hurtling across the asphalt on your ass of course!

Moto GP’s strength is in its sheer adrenaline rush as you barely maintain control at the very limit of man and machine’s capabilities in an online environment whilst looking pretty damn good.

Like everyone else I rented the original Moto GP for a few days to get all the bikes unlocked and all the rider stats maxed and it became the most competitive game me and my friends have ever played. Taking days off work in order to beat the other’s times by 0.02 seconds was common. Equally common was the phone call received by the newly toppled Hombre who had to endure torment and bragging from such gloating bastards!

No other game has had the incredible sensation of 5 or 6 of you racing millimetres apart at 200mph+ where the slightest error, or roaming off racing-line would topple all 6 of you. Yet somehow all 3 laps would go without a crash, an implicit trust existed between you all that meant you could race wheel to wheel at savage speed in an ultra-competitive, e-penis-extending, high-speed, battle of wits, nerve and reactions. THAT is the heart and soul of Moto GP and of all the games released for the 360 so far, the latest of the Moto GP series was the most anticipated for all of us.

Moto GP 2006 remains true to its roots in providing a heart-thumping, high speed racer with an incredible ability to make you care for the first time in your life about gear-ratios, suspension hardness and wheelbase lengths. Never in any other racer have I bothered with such things, yet in Moto GP I find myself running time-trial after time-trial perfecting the balance of the throbbing metal steed between my legs, perfecting my line around that damn right-hand kink at Donnington by a matter of millimetres.

The feeling you get when you actually manage a lap without a mistake, without either underbraking or overbraking, having taken the fastest yet riskiest line at every corner and crossed the line with a lap-time you never though possible is undeniably sexual. To see that time toppled by a friend a few days later by half a second when you thought you had obtained perfection is gut-wrenching and sends you into a blind fury that can only be satiated by another 37 laps of the track, trying to find that slight adjustment to perfection in order to grab the mantle back is perhaps the most anal activity I have ever engaged in… But I love it!

Apart from the actual racing, one of the many strengths of Moto GP has always been the solid graphics and the incredible sensation of speed. Tell me that you don’t get a slight erection when you come over the crest and head down that steep hill at Sascenring and I will call you a liar!! Alas one weakness of the Moto GP 06 series is that the sensation is drastically reduced on many occasions by a stuttering frame-rate on certain corners of certain tracks. Still it’s not frequent enough to seriously detract from the game too much, but on this triple-processor next-gen box of mine it is pretty inexcusable! There is also a tearing of graphics in many places, but again not quite bad enough to really annoy you apart from when you are watching the (ever-so-gorgeous) replays and the immersion of the otherwise truly photorealistic representation of you swooping round an a long right hander is ruined.

I am also disappointed in some of the environments surrounding the tracks. Compare the incredible environments in PGR3 with those of Moto GP’s and they aren’t even in the same class. But I am being very very picky here as let’s face it, when actually racing; everything other than your racing line and opponents is a blur anyway! Otherwise the graphics are gorgeous and the customisation of the bikes is great as ever (my custom Lime Green and Yellow bike/leathers aren’t to everyone’s tastes, but are indistinguishable in their authenticity from the designs that the real riders wear).

The online racing is the core of the game and is surprisingly lag-free. My only complaint would be the fact that you can’t invite friends to a ranked race. I don’t see the point of this needless limitation, because the whole live experience is about being with friends and it’s not like they can’t find you anyway with a custom search! It just makes it unnecessarily difficult to get the game session going that you want.

In single player mode there is a wealth of options, Grand Prix racing centres around the standard 17 tracks of the 2005 and 2006 seasons (you can switch between both seasons getting the riders, bikes and leathers accordingly!), and the street mode racing is a fun alternative with another 17 tracks which seem a bit short and worthless at first, until you work up to a Legend race on the 1200′s and they begin to feel like Grand Prix tracks and bikes. So a crap-load of bikes, riders, tracks, championships, etc – add to that the challenges (2 for each track) and the 400 points of rider credits you need to achieve and it’s easy to see why after 30 hours of play this week, I still haven’t got close to bored of it! I still have 3 of the 4 Legend championships to complete, 30 points to achieve, and then it’s just the beginning! Only once the single player is behind you, and your stats are maxed out can you truly concentrate and feel competitive online and in the leaderboards (still I am ranked 110th overall Stevey boy… stick that in your pipe and smoke it!!!! … err sorry got a little off-topic!)

Whilst some may be disappointed in the tearing and occasional frame-rate stutters (I for one!), you can’t deny that in it’s heart this game is still the single most demanding, addictive and heart-attack inducing racer of any format. Remember I am not interested in bikes, yet I still love Moto GP!

8.5/10

FOOTNOTE: Literally the moment after posting this, I flicked to my email and low-and-behold had an email from the aforementioned Steve gloating that he had taken a day off work to dedicate to beating my awesome laptimes… the bastard!

UPDATE: Thanks to Nei @ gamerswithjobs.com forums I have been made aware of a couple of rather nasty bugs!

“Do NOT pick the streetfighter leathers or you will be locked out of GP mode and can only play Extreme races. (Only fix is to delete saved games)

Do NOT play the game unconnected from live after playing connected. It somehow loses your saves (it says it cant access storage device) again, only fix is deleting everything.
Climax says there is a patch coming. But who knows when.”

For that reason I am marking the game down to a 7.5, the kind of bug that can wipe away 30-40 hours of effort for something as trivial as choosing leathers is inexcusable!!

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