stripler

Update: After playing through the rookie's cup and nearly completing with moto3 championship, I'm knocking it down to 5 because even the racing simulation feels a bit stale. The sim of the player's bike is super, top-notch, but all the other AI racers race the exact same way. The only way to tell them apart is somehow they spread out during the race. No personality in the competition. Other things I notice are the graphics of the asphalt are sharp with texture of different patches and rubber tracks, etc. But really you'd expect that from a game in 2018 wouldn't you? You'd also expect much better off-track animations, more variety in the commentary, and on and on. This game really is overall mediocre, with a few highlights: Player bike sim, replay, Esports competitions, on-track graphics are good, and highly adjusteable AI difficulty (can be good and bad). Oh, last thought, tried to play online game, nobody in the lobby? Are there really no other players out there or do Sony servers **** that bad? Update: I knocked it down to 7 because the off-track graphics are pretty bad, too cartoony. Not up to par with modern games. The replay feature is nice. I haven't played the MotoGP series in a few years, so I didn't really go into it with any expectations. I've played it for about 15-20 hours now and I'm thoroughly enjoying it. I definitely have some gripes, but overall I think the game, standing on it's own merits, is great. I can't recall that much about the previous game engine, but the Unreal engine does it's job well. Realism is better than what I remember, such as the faster you go, the harder the bike should be to turn, like a LOT harder, and this version does a better job of simulating that. I really was impressed by how realistic the different weather patterns are. One race was in damp conditions, where part of the track was dry and part damp. You could really see and feel (as the bike slides and the controller vibrates) when you ran over damp patches in turns versus dry corners. In general, the vibration feedback works really well, with different types of vibrations letting you know different things about how the bike is behaving. One thing I miss from a version of MotoGP from about 10 years ago is that when you hit above about 180mph everything started to go a little blurry as it flew past. I thought that was such a cool effect that gave a better sensation of speed. Anyway, the career mode is pretty well thought out. You start out in the Rookie's Cup (which I'm currently in), and then you progress as you supposedly would in real life, maybe one day getting an email with an offer, etc. The bike setup is mostly restricted in Rookie's Cup, but you can see the menus that hint at how deep you could go (there's one for ECU). and I've tinkered around with the suspension settings, which are thankfully limited to 4 options: preload, damping, spring rate, and one other I can't recall. Based on the difficulty of the game at easy levels, it's obvious you will have track by track by weather type of unique settings to race at the highest difficulties. Which brings me to my main gripe, the game is too friggin hard. You set the difficulty as a percentage. 50% is considered Easy. I race at 45% and still coming in towards the bottom of the pack, and after playing the game for many hours. Maybe I just ****, but I enjoy the game, so be it. But maybe they could scale down the difficulty a bit to make the learning curve a little less steep at what's considered "easy". It's not much ****, more nit-picking. A guess another thing I could pick at is the fact that the stands are packed with fans going wild... during a Rookie's Cup race. But on the flip side, the crowds look great, and the colored smoke effects during the race add a nice touch. So how about a suggestion? Why not let the rider off the bike and let the player control him, make him walk around and interact with audiences, have special post-race celebrations on cool down lap, etc. It'd be something else to do in the game. After all it is a racing game, and there's not much else to do except... race. But Milestone has done a good job with the racing part. Few nit-picks aside, it's a solid motorcycle racing game.

This game is okay overall. This is the first game of the series I've played, which sounds strange I know. I would have given it an 8 but it was too short. I'm not giving away any spoilers here, at one point there is a map of a city you're in and it has different locations highlighted, so you naturally think you're going to get to see them... nope. You have access to about 3-4 out 9-10 locations on the map. Ridiculous. The ending comes much sooner than you think. That's why I didn't give it an 8. I would've given it a 10 but it had an annoying trait that isn't a software bug, although it also is buggy (more on that later). The sound mixing of the music during a conversation is crap, at least in headphones, which I used in 90% game. The music goes way too soft and then clip of the conversation cuts in abruptly, so it's distracting. It just doesn't sound professionally done. It has bugs, some things that a tester should have easily caught, like during conversations with other characters it will not exit out of it smoothly, forcing you to select the object and replay it's response again. Finally, it would have been nice to be able to actually control the character. But this is nitpicking. The good side is it has a fun and interesting plot with, given how short it was, a few twists. I like it's Afro-noir genre, something that's totally new to me, and has the same kind of surreal vibe as Grim Fandango. The voice acting is good, and there's no vulgarity or violence other than a scene with a shoot-out that plays out more like that duck shoot game at a carnival. So that means my kids can play it, big plus. It's just too short for $20. That's the biggest dissapointment.