Two-Wheeled Arcade Racing For The Masses

By The Jackal

By it's name you can assume that this next game is the latest in top flite motorcycle racing games based on the 2007 season. Dominated by Australian young gun Casey Stoner, the 2007 MotoGP was a good year if you ask me. 

But there may be the odd question of "What is motogp" which can be answered by "it's a new version of 'togp'" and then a slap in the face.

For those with a love of everything two-wheeled and the MotoGP championship, this game will please. 

It's based on all of the official riders, bikes, teams and circuits from the 2007 series which gives the game a huge injection of sports authenticity, and with an impressive physics engine the game is quite realistic and largely enjoyable.

I like to think of these sorts of games as newly released oldies, because they follow the same pattern as last year's version except with a few different tweaks and touch ups. 

Don't get me wrong, I like the gameplay and graphics and features it's just the same old. But hey, if it works for FIFA and Madden NFL, it can work for this.

Once the game boots up, there are 6 menu items: 

• Quick race 

• Time attack 

• Championship

• Challenged 

• Multiplayer

• Options.

Quick race is pretty self explanatory: choose the option, pick a bike, a rider, the difficulty level and race around the track against AI bots.

Time Attack is where you challenge yourself against the clock and try to beat previous best lap times. You can save your best lap times and come back to them later to prove to yourself that that freakish lap time wasn't a dream. 

In this mode you have the option of enabling a ghost, which will show a transparent rider (your previous best ride) racing around the track which is really cool for seeing where you need to improve etc... You can also unlock “Legend Ghosts” which bang around the tracks extremely quickly, adding another challenge and a bit of variety.

Championship is where you take on the reenactment of the MotoGP 2007 championship season. This mode is where you'll spend a large amount of your time and because it is highly configurable it will please the variable junkies out there.

You can set options such as how many circuits you race on and whether or not there are qualifying laps, and you can even choose the weather. Changing these options around can take its toll on the realism of the gameplay and I think Capcom should have had a stock championship to enhance the realism.

Aside from this, the championship is very enjoyable thanks to the easy to pick up arcade-ish physics and challenging gameplay (more on this soon). 

If you're really into motorcycle racing the option to alter the mechanical setup of your bike will be seen as a positive as you can configure tyres, suspension stiffness, turning speed, gear ratios and other various bike criteria.

The Challenges mode is a set of around 100 different challenges where you must compete against both the clock and complete various challenges to progress. 

In the training challenges you have 3 different types of challenges which include Speed, Brakes and Racing Line. In the speed challenges you must make it through a set of checkpoints at a certain speed in order to access the next checkpoint; if you go too slow at any point then you fail.

In the Brakes challenge you have to use your brakes very sparingly in order to finish the level and the Racing Line challenge is where you have to control your bike to follow a line around the circuit, and if you move too far away from the line then you fail the challenge.

These initial training challenges are a great place to start as they help teach you about bike control and how to navigate corners efficiently.

Once you complete the training Challenges you can then go onto different challenges consisting of Checkpoint, Time Objects, Slalom, Quick Race and Medals. All of the challenges are surprisingly enjoyable manage to eat a lot of time if you let them.

Multiplayer is the option which is the most enjoyable in my view. This mode is where you can plug in an extra controller and have some competitive fun against your friends on the track. I love playing against my mates in these sorts of games because I always win. 

The only down side to the multiplayer option is that there is only a maximum of 2 players allowed.

The options section really doesn't need to be explained as this option just lets you configure a bunch of complicated stuff.

The gameplay featured in this game is probably some the best I've seen for a motorcycling game (though I can't say that I've played them all).

Overall the game is fairly realistic and tries to imitate a real motorcycle as best it can while maintaining easy controls and stability for less experienced users. 

For example, when you go around a corner you have to brake quite heavily (especially if you do it at the last second), but unlike in real life you won't fall off your bike and get high-sided and potentially break a bone. 

The control over the bike feels good and braking around corners is always exciting because you have to find your rhythm into the corner and then speed out of it. 

Another cool feature is the ability to do wheelies and stalls on your bike while riding (warning: don't do a wheelie and fall off near the end of a multiplayer race). 

I am quite happy with the control features in this game although I was a little unsatisfied to see that there was no realism control feature. I remember another motorbike game which included a realism feature which fully imitated a real bike, e.g. When you didn't slow down around a corner you would fall off. Although it isn't really compulsory it would be a nice addition to the game for veteran players.

The graphics are decent for a PS2 game, and I would say that they're quite up to date for a game like this. The scenery and layout of some of the levels is really cool, but for others it's a bit too samey and repetitive. There are many different circuits available to race on including:

• Losail International Circuit (Qatar)

• Jerez (Spain)

• Istanbul Park Circuit (Turkey)

• Shanghai Circuit (China)

• Phillip Island (Australia)

These are only a few of the 10 circuits available to play, and some of the riders available to play as also include Alex Barros, Jeremy McWilliams, Andrew Pitt, and Alex Hofmann. Again, these are only a few of the many riders available to play as in MotoGP '07 and it's good to see all the official riders, but it would have been cool to be able to create your own rider and race against your heroes.

Overall I would have to say that this game doesn't push the envelope. It's nothing we haven't seen before and I'd be surprised if you guys reading this article haven't seen this sort of game before. It is a lot of fun and the gameplay is enjoyable in an arcadey kind of way, but apart from the challenge mode it doesn't really bring anything innovative to the motorbike racing genre.

The gameplay is fun and the racing is always competitive and the riders and circuits attempt to imitate realism. But for me this game didn't really bring anything new to the gaming table. Try before you buy.

Game: MotoGP '07
System: PS2
Players: 1-2
Online: No
Developer: Capcom
Distributor: Activision

Rating: 70%

(Ratings Key/Explanation)