Returning to the series year are challenges, which are short events that require you to meet a specific goal in order to earn extra stat points that can be applied to your career rider to improve his top speed, cornering, braking, and acceleration. There are three types of challenges, and they range in difficulty from incredibly easy to maddeningly difficult. Some challenges require you to negotiate a particularly wicked section of the track within a set amount of time, and others require you to take a set of turns and then cross a finish line at or above a certain speed. There are also "follow the leader" challenges in which you have to cross the finish line within one second of the professional rider on the track. Overall, the challenges are a welcome addition to the game because they give you even more incentive to master the most challenging sections of each track. However, some of the challenges are so difficult that you'll likely have to try at least a couple dozen times to pass them, and after a while, riding the same short stretch of track over and over can get old.

Some of the tracks look fantastic thanks to some amazing weather and lighting effects.

As you finish races in career mode, you'll not only earn points and money, but you'll also adjust your seed, which is a score between one and 100 that indicates your level of skill and experience. Your seed starts at 100, but slowly gets lower and lower with each race you complete. Your seed is affected both by single-player career races as well as online races. When racing online, your seed can only improve if you beat riders of the same or lower seed, but if you get beat by a rider with a higher seed yours will actually go up.

The seed is only one example of how well the online game in MotoGP 06 is integrated with the single-player game. For example, in career mode, before a race you can choose to look for a similar race event online and participate in that, to earn the same seed and championship points that you would with the offline race. The game supports up to 16 players online for both the Grand Prix and the extreme races, which is an improvement over last year's game, when the extreme tracks were limited to 10 players online. When setting up a match online there are a ton of options to choose from. You can turn collisions on or off, choose to fill vacant slots with artificial intelligence opponents, and set the lap count, number of players, and skill limits.

There are also different types of races to choose from. You can run a standard race; a stunt race where you get points for doing wheelies and skids; a tag race where you try to "tag" as many corners as possible on a track by getting the best time around them; or you can set up championship tournaments. The online play is arguably the best part of MotoGP 06, and when you get 16 well-matched human opponents in a race it can make for a very hectic and very exciting race. In our experience there's plenty of competition online ranging from beginners to experts, so it's easy to find a good race anytime. There is some slight lag present in some of the online races, but depending on your Internet connection, most of the races run smoothly.

The visuals in MotoGP 06 are hit or miss. Some tracks look absolutely amazing, like the rain-drenched Shanghai track. In fact, the weather and lighting effects look so good that you might find yourself distracted from the race. However, some tracks don't look much better than they did in the previous game. You'll occasionally see some low-res textures in the backgrounds, and there's a distinct line on the horizon when textures come into focus. It can look a bit strange when the yellow center line suddenly appears in a road just a few feet in front of your bike. There are also some very apparent dips in the frame rate, and sometimes when coming around a corner you'll notice the game slows down quite a bit. In addition to the frame rate issue, there are also a lot of very visible lines that frequently appear onscreen where the frames don't quite match up. It's worse on some tracks than others, but when it gets bad it can look pretty ugly. The other very noticeable problem is the lengthy load times before and after each race. Some tracks seem to take longer to load than others, but they all seem to take a bit too long. Despite these technical hitches, MotoGP looks good, and the flaws that it does have usually don't detract too much from the racing experience. The bikes and riders look great, with excellent detail on each part of the motorcycle and each decal on the rider's gear. The riders do animate stiffly once in a while, but for the most part they look good.

With so many options for playing online, you never have to run the same race twice.

MotoGP 06 sounds great, with appropriate and distinct engine noise from motorcycles, and familiar but decent music. Most of the music is recycled from last year's game, so don't expect to hear much in the way of new tunes. The motorcycle sounds are great, though, and the sound alone when you have a pack of three or four bikes opening it up down the final straightaway is enough to watch a replay for.

If you have any interest in racing, you'll want to get this game. The online play alone makes the game worth the investment. The upgrades to this year's game aren't dramatic, but the improved online play, challenges, and handful of new tracks make this a worthy upgrade. That said, MotoGP 06 does have its share of technical issues, and unless you're very familiar with the previous game you won't see much of a difference in this one. Regardless, MotoGP 06 is a great game with plenty to offer race fans.