Totally unfinished game with a long list of serious design flaws.

User Rating: 2 | MotoGP 09/10 PS3
After playing through a career season of 125cc, 250cc, MotoGp and having a go at the online it became clear that the game is not a finished product.


HANDLING

The developer calls the handling model "high sim" but in reality the handling model of the game is childishly easy and falling down for example is practicly impossible. To make things worse there is only one handling model so people wishing to make the game even a bit more realistic are SOL. Supposedly all this is done with "accessibility" in mind, but in this case trying to please everyone with the same handling model ends up pleasing no one.

For some reason the handling on wet is almost exactly the same as on dry weather. There is visible rain and the track looks wet but thats just about it.

Because of the extremely arcadish gameplay, lack of any damage modelling or even bike pickup animations after a crash (a feature found already in SBK 2001) there is no real sense of danger or challenge.

ONLINE

Supposedly the game is designed mainly as an online game but there are serious issues even with the online. For example there are no lap times visible after the race, bike setups can't be made online and there is no info of the race progress either in the lobby or spectator mode. For all you know the people racing could be on lap 1 of 100. The online also suffers from serious stability issues and games with over 10 players will often crash.

MotoGp 09/10 was also the first console game ever that required messing with the modem settings to even get to the online lobby.


REALISM

The short version: there is none. In this department the game fails so hard it's difficult to know where to start. The single player races are limited to 3 laps, no less no more. (yes really!) The qualification times are fixed, so you will allmost allways end up on pole, but get smoked on the race if the difficulty is set higher. Oh, and while qualifying, you can't see your split times or your qualification position. Again, yes really!

Once you get to racing there is no damage modelling and the AI drivers never retire. Remember, how this was supposeed to be a MotoGP game? You can make setups to your bike but only 1 per track. In accordance with the dumbed down spirit of the game the setups are very limited.

While racing, there are no split times visible, or any info on fallen riders etc. There is however a constant bombardment of useless Outrun style info like "CLEAN SECTION" and "OVERTAKE" smack in the middle of the screen.

The only feature even slightly realistic is the tyre wear, but then again whats the point when you can do only 3 lap races in single player. For some reason online races can be longer than 3 laps, but since the lenght is determined by voting in the lobby, they rarely are longer that 5 laps.


AI
In short, the AI is better than in 08. They are not so much on rails and are also affected by crashes. They however still tend to rear end the player from time to time. While the insane difficulty offers stiff competition in single player, the 3 lap limitation pretty much ruins the fun.

SOUND
By the time, if not immediately on single player, you visit the online spectator mode you discover that the engine sounds are one of the worst ever made but the crash effects, amazingly enough, are even worse. Some of the bikes sound better than others, but none of them are even close to acceptable by todays standards. They sound like the engine is idling even when the rider is pushing forward full throttle.

The music is equally bad and descriptive of the games quality the HUD keeps flashing and telling you what song is playing even when the music is turned off. If the sound fx and music doesn't drive you over the edge the scottish announcer will. For some reason the developer has seen fit to add an announcer that keeps shouting useless remarks like "keep up the good work".


GRAPHICS
The developer has made a concious choice about the cartoonish color pallette and general arcadey look of the game. Compared to the upcoming SBK X it loks cheap and childish but to each his own. It's not bad enough to make the game any less playable.The lighting and color pallette seems to vary from track to track and that affects the overall appearance to a degree.

The blur effects are a big (and way overdone) part of the look of the game. Along with the funky colors it makes some tracks nauseating to watch. Supposedly the blur effects are there to ad a sense of speed but blurring everything just doesn't work. For example the bike riding next to you at the same speed is blurry mess eventhough there is no motion between the two objects.

Textures...well, nothing to write home about, but the blur effects make everything, you guessed it, blurry anyway so they do their job.

Where the game shines in graphics are the trackside enviroments. There are lot of trees people and scenery far into the horizon to make the enviroment seem deep, live and rich. Rider animations are your basic stuff, but for example the riders feet are missing the footpegs and the diorvers hands are completely missing in the cockpit view.

CAMERA ANGLES

The game 3 different camera angles. Two of them are your basic chase cams, one close up and one farther away. The third camera angle is the cockpit view wich is otherwise ok, but since Monumental has not bothered to model the driver, you can see the handle bars but there is no rider.

For comparison when was the last time you saw a steering wheel spinning on it's own without the drivers hands visible on a quality car racing game?

The biggest gripe of players that prefer the cockpit view in MC games has been that the cockpit camera is usually attached to the bike and not on the drivers helmet. The result is a view that doesn't actually portray what the world would look like thorugh the riders eyes, but what it looks like through an onboard tank mounted camera. This results in nauseating tilting of the whole view and is therefor usually left unused by most of the players. The other problem with bike mounted cocpit view is that in tight corners the player doesn't see where he is going. In real life the rider keeps tilting his head while cornering and therefor greatly reducing the earth tilting effect usually depicted in games. In real life the rider also turns his eyes and looks where he is going instead of just looking straight to where the bike is pointing all the time. For games the latter is difficult to implement, especially if the only method of input is the basic console controller. The player is usually busy enough without having to turn his head in addition to doing a multitude of other things required to drive the bike (gear changes, weight shift, rear brake, front brake, applying throttle). Monumental has solved the problem half way as you can turn camera tilt on or off.

As additional feature you can even change the camera focus point to either on the rear tire contact point or higher up on the drivers back. What this does is that with the camera focused on the contact patch the bike appears to pivot from the contact patch and not from the middle.

LIVERY EDITOR

While MotoGP 07 had quite a nice livery editor MotoGP 08 had absolutely none. MotoGP 09/10 has come half way back and has a sort of livery tuner feature where you can choose from a selection of premade designs and apply 3 different colors to them. Lame, but better than nothing.

ISSUES WITH THE GAME

- Single player laps limited to 3
- No split times in qualifying
- No position visible in qualifying
- no controller mapping
- no bike damage
- Ai never retires
- replays not saveable
- song list appears on HUD even with music off
- Qualifying times are fixed
- Automatic gear changes "stick" (125 cc & 250 cc)
- Only 20 riders in 125 cc
- Camera option is not saved
- No laptimes data after race
- No SIM mode
- No joining a real team in career.
- No real wet/dry races
- No full bike setup
- No accurate race weekend format
- No real name sponsors
- No hands in cockpit view
- No online setups in lobby
- No hands in cockpit view
- Only one setup per track
- No bike comparison in career bike menu
- AI sometimes runs over the player
- Dissappearing sound of AI bikes (PS3)
- No trackside markers (300m,150m, 100m and so on)
- Online stability issues
- Riders feet are not on the pegs
- Start lights are missing
- No race progress info on lobby or spectator mode

And the list keeps growing...

It seems like the game has not been playtested at all. A prime example is the fact that setups for the career bike you spend hours building up can be edited only once per season. So if you want to change a setup for your bike for an online race for example you will have to start a whole new season and play through all the tracks to get to the one you wish to change the setups to! Apparently the setups are also designed so that changing a 250cc setup for a certain track will also mess up a setup for your previous 125cc bike for that track.