MXGP - The Official Motocross Videogame

I do enjoy racing games in general, but play them fairly casually (no racing wheel) and don't know much about the motorsport this game represents. So I'm rating this from the perspective of someone who just wants to have fun playing a racing game of some description.

Motorcross has some similarities to RallyCross in that you are racing over dirt circuits with plenty of elevations. Just like rally, you need to control and utilise momentum in order to maintain a good racing line, stay on the track, and turn the corners successfully. It's even more important in Motorcross given you are on a motorcyclce and can fall off your bike.

When it comes to jumps or turns, you can control your momentum. If you lean back on a jump, you can gain more height and bypass other bumps. Leaning forward (or using the brake) cuts the jump short. You can go faster on the ground, but then you have to navigate any bumpy surfaces. If there is a turn approaching, it's obviously a good idea to try and cut the jump short to stop you overshooting.

I did think it was weird that your engine seems to cut out when airborne; I would have thought if you hold the accelerator then your wheels would still be powered?

If you do go off course, you quickly respawn on the track, so it is very forgiving. However, it's quite easy to under/oversteer your bike depending on speed, so trying to reposition yourself from a standing start can be tricky, leading to successive respawns as you constantly tumble off the track. I often found myself either making few mistakes, or way too many. I also found myself doing inadvertent wheelies when I turned the assists down.

There's a good number of tracks with some devilish corners with extremely sharp turns or elevation. I thought some of the easiest courses were towards the end of the Career mode's season, so the order should have been revised for a smoother difficulty curve.

Some of the modes seemed a bit pointless, especially if you play the game now. Quick Race seemed to give you a random course, so you may as well choose the Grand Prix mode where you can choose a track. The Time Trial mode always wanted to connect to the online leader boards which I think aren't available now.

In Career mode, the default settings have Practice, Qualifying then 2 races. You can skip Practice and/or Qualifying, although the UI took me a while to work out how to navigate it. If you are doing Practice or Qualifying, you have to return to the pit via the menu, then choose to skip to the next event. You can change the settings so that you remove the Practice and Qualifying so go straight into the race. You can customise the number of laps where 3 is the lowest number; this seemed fine for me.

The game did crash on me a few times, and it seems if it crashes during a career loading screen - it can corrupt your save.

The game took me a while to get used to the handling, but then I found it challenging but forgiving. For someone who isn't particularly interested in motorbikes - I had a lot of fun with it and I would play a more recent/future instalment in the series.