MotoGP 17 Review

Seeing Rossi?

Last year’s MotoGP game, a celebration of the career of Valentino Rossi, was one of the best games on 2 wheels in many years. Can Milestone keep the momentum up this year?

Story:

Unfortunately, there’s none of the content from the Rossi modes last year, which also means that dirt bikes have been removed. What’s been added though, is an interesting looking ‘manager’ mode. Anyone looking for a throwback to motorsport management sims from the 90s will be disappointed though.

Firstly, because your own rider has to be one of your driver roster, which makes the seasons drag. Secondly, the menu structure is poorly laid out, and even going into basic things like emails requires short loading screens, making the process slow. Thirdly, there’s limited differences between this mode and the standard career – it just feels a bit basic. Fourthly, the progression is too slow. I won the Moto3 championship in the first season, but was still well short of enough cash to buy even the worst Moto2 bike.

Finally – there’s no personality. Everything looks like it’s been written by robots. When compared to the depth and breadth of DiRT 4, there’s absolutely no competition.

Gameplay:

On track, there are very few differences between this year’s game and last year’s. The main change is the addition of the Red Bull Rookie championship, which features the slowest bikes of all, and helps to act as a sort of tutorial into the game. But that’s about it. It’s clear that this is a transitional release, and there’s little to no effort gone into some of the historical issues which the game has suffered from.

The AI are robotic and unresponsive. You never see them make a mistake, or act like an actual human. There are no penalties for instigating a crash, and the AI will never try to get out of your way. In fact, one of the easiest ways to succeed in the manager career is to occasionally deliberately take out a rival, to put them back to the bottom of the points and ease the pressure on your own performance.

As ever, there are plenty of control options, but the game will practically play itself when all of the aids are on, and you will barely break a sweat until all of the simulation aspects are turned on.

Multiplayer:

MotoGP 17 offers a full online experience, but it seems like the games are getting less popular as time goes on. Whether that’s series fatigue, declining quality or declining interest in the series itself, it’s hard to tell. But I found that there were very few games available to play with more than 2 or 3 other humans at any one time. The netcode seems good, but without a sufficient player base, the game seems pretty neutered online.

Presentation:

Next year, a move to Unreal 4 has been promised, and it feels like this year’s game hasn’t been given much, if any attention as a result. There’s little race-day feel, and the tracks and circuits are devoid of any life. It’s a really sterile environment, and the circuits feel really bland. It’s worst at circuits shared with the F1 calendar like Silverstone, where there’s a direct comparison with F1 2016, where the level of craft and detail is a real step ahead.

Apparently, all of the engine noises have been reworked this year, and whilst there’s more variation between the classes of bikes, I still don’t get much of a race-day, televised impression of a MotoGP race from the game. Meanwhile, there’s still no broadcast quality intros, commentary or pit-updates, all of which contribute to the decidedly budget presentation.

 

Conclusion:

“MotoGP 17” is an unfortunate anti-climax after last year’s game. With less content, less types of bike, no graphical updates, it feels almost as light an update as the ‘legacy’ FIFA updates EA put out for last generation consoles that effectively only include roster and kit updates. Even the management mode, which could have had a really well thought out story element is just a selection of poorly laid out menus and unnecessary loading screens interspersing the same races as a normal career would have. Unless you absolutely must have all the latest updates, I’d hold out for next year’s game or try to find a much cheaper version of last year’s game.