Like an unreliable motorbike, racing games on mobile devices tend to look sleek and powerful but usually end up handling poorly and ultimately disappointing.
The number of good mobile racers is far outweighed by the number of bad ones.
MotoGP 2010 falls between the two bases – well above being an awful game but far from being perfect.
I-play’s release is an ambitious attempt at putting professional championship motorcycling on the screens of iPhone and iPod Touch devices. It does some things right but is a letdown in several key areas.
Given the lack of other motorcycling games in the App Store, it’s still worth picking up by gamers who want some bike racing action while on-the-go – just don’t expect it to be your dream machine.
Being an official game of the MotoGP series it features the real-life riders including Valentino Rossi, Casey Stoner and Dani Pedrosa as well as all the authentic tracks such as Silverstone and Laguna Seca.
The full 18-Grand Prix 2010 world championship can be played, with 10 teams to race for.
The front-end presentation is very lively and vibrant, and sets the perfect tone for a high-energy game.
It’s on the track where a game like this needs to perform and here it does an OK job with some bumps in the road.
One strong feature of the game is races having 17 riders on the track, a figure which puts many other racing games to shame.
There is some nice attention to detail on the tracks, although the colours look slightly washed-out and bland to me. Texturing and lighting are not outstanding.
Bike and rider graphics aren’t terrible but are a little rough looking. Sounds are weak – the bikes just don’t sound growly enough.
Overall, graphics and audio are lacklustre up against other games on the same platform.
On the positive side, MotoGP provides excellent draw distances, runs very smoothly and for a mobile game gives a great sense of speed which is intensified when using the bumper-view camera.
Controls in MotoGP are very simple. Acceleration is taken care of automatically so all players have to worry about is tilting their device left or right to steer while tapping the left side of the screen to brake or the right-hand side to use the boost function for an injection of extra speed.
I’ve found the steering to be too twitchy. The braking is over-sensitive - top speed or screeching halt seem to be the only options with no gentle decreases in speed in-between. It would be nice to have some control settings introduced into the game.
The boost gives players more control over speed but takes a lot of the skill out of the game. If you run into the gravel or grass, you just hit the boost button to get out of trouble, or you can use it to just speed past other riders without bothering with any clever overtaking moves.
Bikes in real life don’t have buttons to suddenly become jet-propelled torpedoes, so all this feature does is send the already restricted realism in the game plunging even further.
The A1 on the lowest of the three difficulty settings is woefully poor. The game is supposed to be fun and accessible to casual players who might not be diehard MotoGP fans, but it’s far too easy on this level.
On the harder professional and legend settings things get more interesting, and the game switches from arcade to more of a simulation, though it never becomes an out-and-out sim.
Even on the hardest setting, the AI is still dismal, although even if it was fantastic there still wouldn’t be much real racing in the game while it’s possible to simply zip past other riders using the unfair advantage of the boost button.
At least on the hardest level, it takes more work to control the bike and mistakes are punished more severely, with the rider flipping off his bike fairly easily. Even with this the racing is still quite, well, boring. The game should be a lot more exciting than it actually is.
A couple of other things the game is lacking are multiplayer racing and online leaderboards for lap times. These features are not usually a big deal for me in games, but MotoGP would definitely be better for having them. Championship and quick race modes are all that is available so the game is quite limited.
While there are undoubtedly improvements which could be made to this game, there is still some full-throttle fun to be had with MotoGP.
There are far more car racing games available for iPhone and iPod Touch than bike racing titles. Of the bike games available, most are the off-road motocross type rather than track racing.
MotoGP is the best of the small bunch and is worth checking out if you’re a fan of motorcycling games.
Verdict: 6 out of 10 – Contains all the names and locations of the MotoGP world but not enough of its excitement.
Watch a trailer of MotoGP 2010:
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