Review for MotoGP 19. Game for PC, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, the video game was released on 06/06/2019
Cold, rain, and some handkerchief worn too much, due to an allergy still clinging to the last breaths of a spring that, in reality, never arrived. Spending time in these inhospitable conditions in front of the TV, pad in hand, is almost mandatory and what's better than "warming up" body and mind between one drift and the other riding a thunderous KTM Rookies Cup format? Nothing, we would tell you, even if it would be a matter of anticipating by a few days what your feelings will be once you get hold of your copy of MotoGP 19. The new course dedicated to the most beloved centaurs in the world by Milestone is now in the pipeline. arrival, with a quantity of important news that promise many hours of quality play.
Roar of engines, traffic lights go out ... Go!
So many pretenders to ultimate success
The first thing that catches your eye once the game starts is the disarming amount of activities you can undertake. One of the strengths of this new MotoGP 19 is certainly found under the heading Game modes: many, different and, above all, fun and satisfying. Milestone has decided to enormously inflate the content offer of the title and in addition to the classic fast competitions such as the single Grand Prix and the Time Trials, the Championship is already becoming an important agglomeration of quality and quantity. It is possible, in fact, to start a single season, but being able to choose between many different categories (not only MotoGP, therefore), for an exciting playful variety. This, of course, also extends to the pivotal mode of production, namely career. The latter, once a type has been selected between the Classic and the Pro (the one, to be clear, that puts the brakes on any kind of help) allows once again to start from the slums, even from the MotoGP Rookies Cup, thus attempting a long climb to the premier class, defeating opponents after opponents, progressively more and more difficult.
An exciting career, therefore, not only for the desire to improve on the track, but also off. Thanks to the development points, in fact, it will be possible to invest in your bike, thus considerably increasing - over time and victories - the overall quality. Here, however, the exaggerated goodness from the point of view of official licenses present in the game also comes into play. Choosing which team and in which category to start your career is certainly made even more magical by the possibility of choosing from practically all the racing cars in circulation, complete with attached official drivers. Incredible care, from this point of view, which strongly contributes to making every single Grand Prix of every single vintage even more exciting, with the ultimate goal of climbing to MotoGP.
Clearly, the surprises do not end there: the arrival of the pills will further sweeten the pill Challenges, really many and all well thought out, which will allow us to relive the (many) most exciting moments in history. You will happen to impersonate Stoner against Rossi, Rossi against Stoner, to travel in the avenue of bitter memories in the company of the late Simoncelli and Hayden and so on, in a truly commendable cocktail of fun and longevity.. To complete the park, and it could not be otherwise, is the excellent multiplayer sector of the title: no local split-screen, ok, but the arrival of dedicated servers (offered by Amazon, ed) and the now official entry into the eSports world should abundantly compensate for this, making Milestone's child's game one of the most important from a competitive point of view.
Have fun in style
Milestone, by now we know, is synonymous with quality from the gameplay side, but it has always shown its side to a few too many blunders, capable of sometimes even heavily affecting the overall quality of its work. Fortunately, this time, the work done by the Milanese team seems to be more refined and cared for than usual, bringing as a dowry a driving system that is clean, fun enough, satisfying and, above all, scalable. Thanks to the convenient menus, the player can easily select different settings to better set their gaming experience, thus directly influencing the play offer in general. Is it possible, for example, to set the level of difficulty of the opponents, the realism index in collisions and their consequences? as well as on the actual performance on the track, on factors such as the presence or absence of penalties by the jury. The good news, however, do not stop there: Milestone has done a commendable job with regard to artificial intelligence, and this seemed very evident to us from the very first bars. The opposing pilots, even at the most modest difficulty levels, are very smart, clever and above all aggressive.
This contributes heavily to making everything more exciting and exciting, thanks also to the good introduction of the experiment ANNA, a sort of evolution of the concept of Drivatar. Thanks to this technology on the track you never feel, for example, that annoying elastic effect typical of most driving games. Each race has a story of its own, each battle has its protagonists, for a convincing and satisfying play experience. To crown it all, there is the splendid differentiation of the various bikes available. Whether it's a MotoGP, a Moto 3 or one of the “historic” bikes, that is, those that can be used during the various challenges, the feeling returned pad to the hand will always be different. Therefore, get used to having to adapt to the various passages from one category to another. We have verified it on our skin. In fact, we happened to fly away often and willingly on a Moto 3 after the passage from the Rookies Cup, precisely due to a different performance of racing cars on two wheels. A great result, from this point of view, a clear sign of Milestone's excellent work in this respect. Clearly, the game is not free from defects on the gameplay side: by setting the difficulties you risk seeing a sometimes excessive difficulty range, on both sides. By modifying the AI of the opponents, it is possible to reveal a level of challenge that is too low or too high, so in the second case, a minimum error can frustrate (a bit like in reality) an entire weekend. Honor to realism, of course, but not everyone will like this thing.
Visual spectacle, but with some flaws
Graphically speaking, MotoGP 19 does not differ much from its predecessor, but still manages to convince from a visual point of view without too much effort. The models of the bikes, the animations, their effect on the track and everything related to the graphic aspect in general is really excellent, even on a modest PlayStation 4 Slim, the version we used in the review phase. From a graphic point of view, in fact, the overall experience offers impressive ideas from the technical side, bringing on the screen an overall almost photorealistic graphic rendering if we analyze elements such as motorcycles, track and riders. Once again, however, Milestone ends up getting lost on the usual mistakes of the past: if we exclude the splendid rendering of riders, motorcycles and elements closer on the screen and to the track, the whole outline appears to be clearly inferior in invoice, thus revealing a certain unwillingness in going to retouch a defect that has now become historic not only for the series in question, but a bit for all racing games in general. The real big gap, however, is represented, once again, by the absence of 60 fps, which for a racing game is a rather important limit. We hope for progress from this point of view, perhaps already in the near future.
On the other hand, the sound sector is splendid: the motorcycle engines, very well made and differentiated according to the category, offer an exciting experience to be lived, almost as if we were actually in front of a race on television. This is also greatly helped by the complete presence of all official MotoGP licenses and the good Guido Meda in commentary. Too bad, however, that this can only be heard in the interlude sequences and never on the track. To conclude the discussion regarding the audiovisual aspect of the title, the possibility to customize different aesthetic factors of the pilot stands out. It is possible, in fact, to create your own personalized helmet or stickers to attach to the suit and even the style of the number to wear. All this, then, can be uploaded (and downloaded) online, completely shareable with users from all over the world.
Online sector: eSports and… Match judge!
For this edition, Milestone has decided to go really big, as regards the sector multiplayer online of this MotoGP 19. First of all, the new dedicated servers arrive, “offered” by Amazon, capable of giving life to online gaming sessions of great level, in terms of stability and number of connected players. Before taking part in any session, you can manually set tons of preferences, and even take part in the sessions by impersonating the Race Judge. This feature is clearly one of the most interesting and allows you, among other things, to judge even the performance of your virtual colleagues as they whiz on the slopes. In MotoGP 19 there is no shortage of Private competitions. Of course, you can choose to comfortably join an already available session, selecting the type of rules, the preferred track and all the other settings. The pulsating vein of the multiplayer sector, however, is certainly that linked to the factor eSports, on which Milestone is focusing heavily for its MotoGP. Thanks to the excellent changes made to the gameplay and above all to the new servers (whose stability, we reiterate, we have not yet had the opportunity to try), the title is called to take the decisive step to production and we are convinced that the goal is already been achieved, at least in part.
MotoGP 19 is solid, fun and satisfying in practically all respects, also thanks to an increasingly refined graphics, an impressive quantity of officially licensed bikes and riders and many game modes. If we add to these a renewed artificial intelligence - the so-called ANNA - which makes every driver capable of unpredictable and realistic actions, well, that's it. However, it is necessary to evaluate in the long term how much this mechanic can actually safeguard the title in terms of variety in the gameplay. What didn't convince us too much, however, is the overall challenge rate. Although settable, as well as the driving model, the overall challenge level has proved on some occasions to be too mild or too high, which is potentially frustrating and which could lead to leaving production, at least according to the single game. We didn't even like to notice once again the absence of the local split screen, but by now we are slowly getting used to this (sad) gameplay solution and not even the now usual absence of 60 fps, but you can't have everything from life.
Our overall opinion on this MotoGP 19 is however more than positive. If you are passionate about motors or driving games in general, you have no excuse: Milestone's work is practically commendable and, therefore, run - in every sense - to buy your copy!
► MotoGP 19 is a racing-Sport type game developed and published by Milestone for PC, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, the video game was released on 06/06/2019
