I’m pretty sure at one point or another in most dude’s lives, owning a dirt bike seems like a great idea. Growing up, I often thought about getting one and doing stunts and powersliding and all that cool stuff. Of course, the reality of the matter is that it’s a dangerous, time-consuming, and expensive hobby or sport to get into. Still, motocross is exciting to watch or experience in a videogame. I used to love Microsoft’s old Motocross Madness series and EA’s Freekstyle, and while those games were really fun, they did not attempt to be a sim. Fast forward to present day and we have MXGP: The Official Motocross Videogame, which is sim-focused and features licensed teams and riders, tracks, and configurable levels of realistic physics.
If the name MXGP: The Official Motocross Game (MXGP) sounds familiar, it was in fact released back in March on the last-gen systems. The PS4 version brings with it four new tracks, giving you nineteen total across locales like Thailand, Germany, the Czech Republic, Italy, Qatar, and more, with terrain varying between sand, intermediate, and hard pack. Visuals also receive a much needed boost, sporting four times the textures as the PS3 version, but they still don’t seem full-on next-gen per se. Framerates handle well even with all twenty-two racers on screen, and the changes to the state of the track as the race goes on (i.e., the terrain deforms) is neat to see. Props along the sides of the tracks are still kind of flat and forgettable, but you won’t be looking at those much anyway given the concentration required to stay competitive.
Just how challenging you want to make MXGP is largely up to you, as the game allows you to adjust AI skill levels between Easy/Medium/Hard/Realistic and also adjust the Physics between Base, Medium, and Pro. Regardless of what combination you choose, the included tutorial videos that are offered to be played at first launch (but can also be watched anytime from within the My MXGP menu) are well worth a few minutes. These explain the gameplay mechanics, which is obviously a lot more than just hold down throttle and turn the left every now in then. True, there aren’t a lot of concepts or controls to keep track of, but being able to use these effectively and at the right times is key. In short, expect a moderate learning curve depending on your AI and Physics settings, but I’ll say that even though I lost my first, oh, 20+ races, I still had fun playing and learning as I went, which is more than I can say for most sports games with a significant learning curve.
Speaking of the controls, let’s take a closer look at them because they’re different enough from other games I have played to bear mentioning. To accelerate, use R2, the more you press it the faster you accelerate, but you’ll have to really temper your use of the throttle as there are many turns and jumps that you can’t just go into full bore. Braking is done with L2 for the front brakes, and X for the rear brakes; you can also enable Joint Braking which means you just have to use L2 to and the rear brakes are simultaneously applied, but at anytime you can still rear brake at your discretion. Rear braking felt more like a ‘handbrake’ i.e., for attempting to power slide or make really sharp turns, than the front brake. You’ll often use rear braking in conjunction with steering and/or leaning, which are done with the sticks. The left stick steers the bike left or right, while the right stick is used to lean the rider’s weight forward, backward, or left or right. All of these motions come into play, often simultaneously, and almost constantly during a race. Players can also change the camera, view to their left/right/behind, or respawn.
Getting the hang of the controls themselves isn’t too hard, but knowing how to take those jumps and turns takes longer to become adept at. Scrubbing, for example, is one really cool and helpful maneuver you can do to help limit your air time. Sometimes, you want to take a jump but you don’t want to just hang in air longer than you have to, because you gain more ground faster if you’re zipping along the track. So, by pressing both thumbsticks to the left at the instant that your bike is leaving the ground, you can kick your bike out sideways to help reduce your lift and get yourself back down ASAP. Just make sure you’re not leaning too far forward or backwards on your way down (depending on your Physics settings), lest you might immediately wreck, but I didn’t find this to be much of a problem when scrubbing.
Wrecks can and most certainly will happen though, which is to be expected when you pack twenty-two racers together at the starting gates. I’ll say that on Medium/Medium (AI level/physics), anytime there was a collision it always seemed like my bike was the one that got dropped while the AI racers went right on, often clipping through me, completely unimpeded. This is annoying to be sure, but thankfully you’re instantly dropped right back onto the race course and acceleration on these bikes is pretty great. The terrain deforming I mentioned earlier can also, more subtly, cause wrecks as well, which needs some work. You will fairly routinely see your tires or those of other racers clip through the earth, just a little bit, and I think that that might be related to some relatively rare physics issues in which semi-unexplainable wrecks occur. I should note that the AI racers do wreck from time to time, and unless you’re playing on a high difficulty setting or against some of the folks online (all of the ones I encountered had crazy high ranks), making a mistake or two during the course of the race doesn’t necessarily mean you’re out of the race, you’re just going to have to concentrate to get back into it, but it’s proven more possible (and a hell of a lot more fun), than say an F1 game in a similar situation.
Wrecks are just a part of the game, but Riding Assists can provide you with some extra help. These are configurable before a race event and include the Physics and Joint Brakes settings I mentioned earlier. There is also Rider Weight and Transmission that you can toggle between Semi-Auto or Manual. While I like playing racing games with a manual transmission, I spent nearly all of my time with MXGP in Semi-Auto because I was already focused enough on trying to win the race without having to manually change my gears. Anyway, some other miscellaneous settings include being able to adjust the race Length between 3/5/10/15/20 laps (each lap is about one mile in every track) and change the Session to a Single Race, Double Race, Full Weekend, or just Qualifying & Races. The latter of these are hardcore and very time consuming — the Practice stage alone, in which your best time is used to calculate what starting gate position you are in once the real race starts, lasts over thirty real minutes. You can skip this if you want to though by going to Pit.
The Pit is also where you can make some changes to the way your bike handles. Categories include Suspension, Gears, and Brakes. Adjustments are made with multiple sliders that effect things like your gear ratio (lower this for faster acceleration, increase for higher top speed), spring stiffness, compression dampening, and brake rotor types. Brief descriptions are included to help you make your choices. You can expect to spend some time in these configurations, perhaps even on a per track basis, to find what settings work best for you when.
So what about gameplay modes? There are quite a few actually — Instant Race, Grand Prix, Championship, Career, Time Attack, and Multiplayer (which includes both Online Race and Online Season). I should add that, during first launch, you create a basic persona by creating a name, picking from one of a dozen or so included avatar pictures, selecting your country, and even your personal manager (all of whom I think are real managers in motocross). These settings come especially into play in the Career mode that sees you fielding offers from various real motocross teams as you decide what team to join. Alternatively, you can also choose from twenty-five or so MX1 class riders or thirty MX2 tier riders (60 total anyway) that are all licensed. As far as online play, I had a little bit of trouble finding some matches to play, and often when I did the other racer(s) were ranked far above what my rank was. It made the races pretty boring for them I imagine, but the games played smooth, despite a connection quality warning window popping up pretty often in some matches.
With that, let’s head on to the summary…
