MotoGP™21

Review

Milestones’ back with their highly anticipated yearly moto-sim MotoGP 21. Taking small, calculated steps year after year surely seems to be paying off with each title coming up with overall improvements, but kinda upsetting to see nothing groundbreaking since the previous title.

Banking on previous title success and progress, Milestones seems to be having smooth sailing with this one. Hey, you know what . . . if ain’t broken, you don’t need to fix it, but something out of the box would’ve been nice.

The game is exactly what I was hoping for from a MotoGP title with all the bells, and wisely that makes a Motor sport simulator good.

Tutorial mode: As a new player or regular to the genre, massive props to the Milestone dev team for implementing a fantastic tutorial system. Despite the fact that I was a bit let down that there was no charming speaker guiding me all the way through, but the tutorial was great.

The tutorial system goes through one important lesson at a time, meanwhile giving full freedom to the player’s self-education. Each lesson consisted of one lap with the rules and the pro tips showing on the sides.

Which for most games should’ve been enough to get someone started, but this is a fine sim we’re talking about and it’s not that easy. The controls are finely detailed and sensitive to the point that the slightest miss-handling of the bike can lead to crashes, slips, and spinning off of the track.

The tutorial section consists of basic lessons and advance lessons, all of which are pretty well thought out, helping the players gain a better insight into the race’s rules, track discipline, bike handling, bike insides, etc.

The basic tutorial section consists of five lessons – Bike control, Ideal Trajectory and Curves, Penalty System, and Pass. These lessons are well thought out and enough to get you started with the game, the bike handling, and the race rules, but definitely not enough if you don’t have an understanding of the sport.

The advance section goes into more detail about the whole inner workings of your bike, management, handling, etc. It would be a big no no to skip this section; yes you can get started, maybe even win a few races, but knowing more about your ride can give you a far greater advantage.

Bike Controls: Controls can be whatever you’re comfortable with and prefer. The keyboard and controllers both work just fine.

As I mentioned earlier, the controls and bike handling in this game are very fine, and it truly does take a while to get used to. It took me a while to get laps done without slipping or getting off track.

Finger coordination is a must, understanding when to accelerate and when to hit the brakes, keeping an eye out for both long and tight turns, each requiring different techniques to get it done perfectly.

I really don’t have anything negative to say about this aspect of the game, other than I am a flitty noob who took way too long to get perfect laps done.

Game modes: MotoGP 21 is bringing back its tried and tested Quick modes with three modes: the Classic Career mode, and the Multiplayer mode.

The Quick mode consists of Time Trial, Grand Prix, and Championship. Unlike Career mode, it's very light-hearted and a better starting point for newcomers to become familiar with the game. And the modes also let you control a lot of the aspects that the game as to offer, such as Riding Aids, Race options, Player and Track.

Career is the cream of the crop, letting you get started for a career with great attention to detail. You can choose your management, choose between factory teams or get proposals, rider customization, bike customization and the calendar events themselves.

Multiplayer: This competitive face of MotoGP is in a pretty upsetting state right from the get-go. Over the hours I have spent, I haven’t found more than 5 public lobbies, and all of them were either full or empty at any given time.

But the races themselves with individual players from around the globe were fun, tense, and very competitive.

Customization: Although there is a good assortment of rider customization options, they are seriously lacking and need a major update/overhaul. Especially the face presets, there are currently about 18 different male and 5 female face presets in the game with nothing much to offer. The faces are pretty dull in 2021.

Some customization sections, such as the helmets, are pretty jam-packed and give the option of creating your own or downloading customs, but others are pretty disappointing with only two different styles of suit, four different styles of boots etc!!!

Graphics: The graphic section, like the customization options, is pretty underwhelming. Don’t get me wrong, the game looks decent but not something that I was expecting to get in the year 2021!

There is not much going on between high and ultra, but happy to see stable performance across the board.

Music and sound effects: Music selection is pretty disappointing, nothing much to say. But the sound effects are stunning! I have never heard of these types of bikes up-close and personal, but I do feel like the game did a bang-up job of the engine noises, accelerations, and decelerations sounds; they are just fantastic and crisp. But other than that, it’s a total letdown; there are no crash sound effects, the damaged/crashed bikes don’t sound different, etc.

Review written by BiteMexD for Zeepond.com!