MotoGP 19 Review for Steam

Italian game developer Milestone S.r.l’s MotoGP 19 is a pretty decent racer. There are a lot of things I like about this game, but there’s one big thing that isn’t so good. Despite how fun all the various game modes are, the A.I leaves something to be desired.

            There are 4 main game modes within this game: career, quick race, historical race, and multiplayer. The quick race is exactly what it sounds like, just a quick race. You can select your rider and type of race and then your off. The historical races were cool, you get to recreate historical moments in motorsport history and are rewarded for completing them well enough. It’s a fun opportunity to get to ride old school bikes, even if they are a little bit trickier to handle than the modern ones. The rewards range from unlocking the historic race and their bike to unlocking new stickers for your own bike or bodysuit. I’d say the A.I in historical mode is better than the A.I in career mode, there’s a challenge in the historical races. I didn’t get to play the multiplayer since no one was on, although I did play a press review version of the game, so that’s fair. The career mode is a massive part of the game, it’s so big that it deserves its own paragraph.

So, here it is. You start out career mode by creating your character. The character creation is somewhat limited, but I wasn’t expecting a character creator in the first place so it seemed kinda cool. One of the best parts about the game is how much you can adjust things to your liking, and that holds true for your character too. While you can’t give your character crazy hair or an eyepatch, you can adjust how many fingers they use to press the break and how they lean in on turns. Once in the career mode there are 4 different series to choose from, ranging from the Red Bull series where everyone rides the same bike to higher level series where bikes and engines can be tuned and adjusted. Once you pick your series you can start racing, and a single race is a three-day event. Day 1 is usually for warm ups. This is where you get your bike in tune and try to get a good time for qualifying. I found the tune up part especially cool. If your bike isn’t accelerating fast enough or if your bike is wobbling too much in the corners, all you have to do is tell your engineer and he’ll fix the issue for you. If you know what you’re doing you can bypass the survey and just go to manual tuning, where you mess with the bike yourself. Day 2 is usually a warm up and a qualifying round, or qualifying round 1 and 2. Day 3 is a warm up and the race. It’s important to set a good lap time during all three days so you can get a good position in the starting lineup, but if you don’t care then you can just skip straight to the race.

            The racing itself is fun. The motorcycles are fun to drive and each one feels distinct. With all the warm up and practice sessions you get to the point where you can tell the difference between every adjustment in your bike. And for the most part it’s a lot of fun to drive around the track.

But the A.I isn’t good. I had no problem blowing them away. In the practice sessions, I could easily get the best lap by a margin of over 5 seconds. When it comes time for the actual race, I blow the other racers away. But for the brief second I’m not miles away from them, they act like a swarm from hell. The A.I riders follow the same path to a tee. They don’t budge from it, they don’t adapt. If you’re on the path, they won’t react to you, they’ll just try to drive through you. It’s like racing against slot cars.

            The A.I problem probably won’t be a problem in multiplayer though. I could see the multiplayer portion being a lot of fun and very competitive. If the A.I were a little better then this would be a very good game.

            7 out of 10

Check Out the MotoGP 19 Launch Trailer:

MotoGP 19  releases today, June 6th on PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and Windows PC/STEAM. A few weeks later, the game will launch on Nintendo Switch.