You need to be good at the game to get anywhere and that’s exactly how this sort of game should be. The long and short of it is that there are no shortcuts here. How well you’re doing in any given race will decide if this is worth it for you. You can recover from a turn that was taken too widely without falling, but you may still incur a penalty which you can either deal with or take a shot at reversing it by completing one of the track’s narrow outside loops. Go too fast, and you’ll end up in the sand or dirt where you will also probably wipe out. Tighter corners require slower speed and perhaps more braking, but go too slow and you’ll wipe out. Taking corners can be as punishing or as easy as you want depending on your build, but the key is still managing the balance between your speed and you’re turning angle. ![]() ![]() Last year’s game was certainly not broken in this department, so Milestone clearly saw no need to fix it, and that was a wise choice. Racing in these environments feels good in that it feels about like last year’s game. "Slightly different shades of the same pavement, sand and grass await you at every track, and with most races being set to six laps by default it can get a little long in the tooth for anyone who isn’t a hardcore MotoGP fan, which is one reason why I’m surprised more effort wasn’t made to appease that hardcore fanbase with better graphics." The game was not officially released at the time of writing this review, so I can’t speak to how well the online functionality works, but it is there. Slightly different shades of the same pavement, sand and grass await you at every track, and with most races being set to six laps by default it can get a little long in the tooth for anyone who isn’t a hardcore MotoGP fan, which is one reason why I’m surprised more effort wasn’t made to appease that hardcore fanbase with better graphics. While that variety is nice on paper, in practice it really doesn’t change much about the tracks. There are plenty of events spanning across the globe to places like Argentina, Germany, Thailand, Austin Texas, and everything in between. Managing contracts, teams, and managers is all here and will influence the way you race and how you view each race within the greater context of your career path. Career mode is as detailed and nuanced as fans of this series will likely expect. The game has a handful of modes that you will recognize from last year including quick modes, multiplayer, championships, and of course the career mode. A little more effort put into improving graphics across the board would have been nice, especially considering this series prides itself on its simulative aspects, and not being just another arcade jaunt. I don’t know for sure if these weren’t touched at all between last year and this year, but I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that they hadn’t been. With the bikes, I suppose that’s fine as they still look great, but the human character models and environments still look decidedly dated. I guess we should expect as much though, given that the character models, tracks and bikes all look like they are completely re-used from last year’s game with no noticeable improvements. I was hitting a solid 60 frames during gameplay almost 100% of the time in framerate mode, which was nice to see given that last year’s game was not quite as reliable at launch. Of those improvements, most noticeably, is the way the game runs on the PS4 Pro. MotoGP 21 basically fits into that slow-but-(mostly) steady drip of improvements. ![]() ![]() While some might not feel like these incremental steps forward are worth the asking price for these games at launch, it is nice to see Milestone’s racing games getting better overall. Thankfully it’s been mostly the former over the last couple years. Milestone’s most recent efforts in the motocross and MotoGP genres have been generally decent as marginal improvements over their predecessors with tweaks to their gameplay that ranges anywhere from noticeably positive to the imperceptible and to the slightly disappointing.
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