MotoGP™20 Review
Genre: Simulator-Vehicle
Gameplay: Sports-Racing
Theme: Motorcycles
Developer: Milestone S.r.l.
Publisher: Milestone S.r.l.
MotoGP™20 is a welcoming challenge to both new and returning players to the series. The game is visually stunning, performs great, has a new physics engine, subpar sound design, and a difficulty scale that can challenge every player. The game has three different modes: Career, Historical, and Multiplayer. I spent the majority of my time in the Career mode.
The Career mode is 'sufficient' for a sports game but could have seen more variance. The essentials are here such as accurate liveries, drivers, teams, all 3 Moto classes, contracts, Research & Development (R&D), and personal staff. The game begins to shine with the customization, where you can customize the colors of your suit and bike, choice of helmets and gloves, and decals on the bike.
Where the career mode suffers is in the lack of depth put in the R&D section. Within your career, you can assign a career manager, chief engineer, and a data analyst. The introduction of any form of a tutorial is missing here. It took me nearly 1/3 of the first season in the Moto3™ class to realize that I could have been developing parts for my bike to improve performance. Once you get the hang of the R&D system and start upgrading your bike, the game gets insanely easy. Halfway through the season, I was on pole position and winning every race by several seconds. This unrealistic jump in difficulties is immersion-breaking, so it resulted in me changing the AI difficulty from Medium to Advanced.
One of the brand new editions to MotoGP™20 over its previous title was an introduction to a new 'Neural A.I. System'. This system is great once you figure out the right difficulty for your play style. Unfortunately your "play style" depends on a lot of factors that change continuously depending on what you are doing. I found the start of seasons to be challenging and I would often finish outside the top 20, so I would bring the AI difficulty down. Whereas later on in the season my newly developed bike thanks to R&D I would swing to being 1st place in nearly every category, so I would bump up the AI difficulty. I understand the intention behind this system. I understand that you are supposed to get better as you progress through the season. However, I shouldn't be transitioning from nearly last place to first place in a matter of a couple of races, and vice versa when I start a new season/career with another team. I hope this feature is further improved upon in future installations.
The next game mode I tackled was the Historical mode. In this mode, you play a series of challenges (short races based off historical events) that reward you with unlocking historical riders/bikes/liveries for your garage. This is by far the most challenging mode in the game, credit given to the physics engine used to model the bikes. Bikes tend to have a yawing moment (wheelies when accelerating and decelerating) at almost every corner on the track. At first (especially if you are new to the series) this can be nearly impossible to prevent, but once you get the handle of the physics engine, it will motivate you to further progress in the Historical mode. I enjoyed the challenge and often found this mode to be the most addicting.
Unfortunately, I did not get a chance to play the Multiplayer mode that often. I didn't have any issues finding races or playing online with other players. Some players are really good, while others can't make the first turn. So your experience mostly depends on the players you will meet.
MotoGP™20 is an above-average experience, well worth checking out for both new and returning players. What brings the experience down is the painfully inconsistent sound design, a lack of a proper introduction to the career mode, and an AI difficulty system that breaks immersion by acting as an on/off switch rather than a scale. Where the game shines is in graphics, performance, customization, a new physics engine, and a challenging but rewarding Historical mode.
3/5 - Above Average