I don’t particularly like speed. While some chase the thrill of a death-defying vehicular experience, it fills me full of dread. I get moaned at by my wife for driving at a snail’s pace. The thought of riding a performance sports motorcycle in real life is something that gives me palpitations. And as an old hand of playing Milestone’s long running Moto GP series, I can confirm that even handling the virtual bikes and doing it vicariously can be a testing experience thanks to the supreme physics and innate difficulty of managing the twists and turns and nuances that being in the saddle involves.
So fair play to the developer for actually doing me a solid and including a pared-back arcade handling mode in the latest instalment of the MotoGP franchise. There is also a MotoGP Academy mode that is beautifully implemented. It is just what a newcomer to the sport needs – you get a handy guideline on the track, and alerts to tell you what to do and when. It drip feeds the MotoGP experience at a pace that is easy to handle and learn how it functions, and gives you a good grounding for when you decide to take the stabilisers off, so to speak, and delve into the full sim meat and drink of 2025.
If you still don’t feel confident enough to go full-on, you can still play with the arcade handling kept on, which actually makes this game work on two different levels. Either have a stress-free blast or mine the rich vein of MotoGP 25 content that the game offers.
And what a deep game this is. The recent Monster Energy title I looked at was a cracker, but this one goes even further. The Career mode is even more chock-full of content than the Motocross game – with cool stuff like training sorties actually helmed by real-life biking superstars, and taking in modes that really mix things up like practising with dirt bikes, or having a ride on minibikes with legends like Marquez talking you through it.
The Career has an almost overwhelming amount of stuff to do, from fine tuning and improving your bike, chopping and changing teams and thrashing out contracts, and dealing with sponsors and media. Tweaking the bikes is now done with the guidance and advice of engineers, which is a cool touch and new to the series. You basically decide what avenue you want to go down and what your endgame is in terms of how you want the two-wheeled behemoth to perform for you. Speed, handling, aerodynamics and several other factors come into play when fine-tuning.
Your mileage with some of this will of course depend on your interest in the sport, and the grunt and allure of the mechanics of the high-spec bikes that form the basis of it. It is unlikely to be a game that a casual player will pick up.
It does look terrific, though, with the Unreal Engine 5 undoubtedly improving the aesthetics. The sheer range of licensed riders, teams, advertising, and familiar locales from around the world of MotoGP is great, and there are some new venues this year such as the Balaton in Hungary.
Playing the actual simulation modes is, without beating around the bush, bloody hard. This is a game that even with the new learning modes and option to make life a tad easier, is still going to be testing for someone like me whose idea of racing heaven is Outrun or Mario Kart, however it is extremely rewarding when it all clicks and you achieve a podium finish, or manage to make it through a particularly difficult race unscathed and with your pride (and physical health) intact.
Milestone has done a fine job with a tricky proposition: making a title that they release annually warrant the purchase if you shelled out for it last time around. There is easily more than enough new content here to fully justify that. The new training modes are great fun, the handling options genuinely open up the teak-tough world of MotoGP to newcomers, and the new game engine really makes it sing. Another tick in the win column then for the racing maestros.
