Price: £39.99

Players: 1-2

It's Moto GP 2, but the "2" rhymes with 'deja vu'. A year on and we're back again on ten tracks, chosen from the Japanese Suzuka, France's Paul Ricard, our own Donnington, plus Jerez, Motegi, Catalunya, Assen, Mugello, Sachsenring and Le Mans, and then head off round them doing lap after lap with standard cosmetic options pre-race and selections to tweak gear ratios etc, if that's your bag. The graphics certainly haven't changed and, in fact, I'm trying to work out what's changed but the game certainly looks dated as a result and looking at the grass, which I frequented upon, it was a bit of a smeary green mess, rather like the embankments in Command and Conquer: Renegade which makes me wonder why the chance was passed when it came to tightening up, or even paying attention to, all of the finer details. Soundwise, it's as loud as it ever was, but when you're amongst a pack of bikes, presuming they haven't all roared off ahead, it sounds like a bluebottle trapped inside a jar of bluebottles!

The control system's the same as the first game, so is the possibility of coming off the track too often - despite the CPU players sticking to the tarmac like glue, trying to get off the dirt track causes the same problems in that turning your bike doesn't move you as quickly as it should, pivoting about a central point and not instantly moving you in the desired direction, while the baffling inclusion is still there too for when you come off your bike and the vibrating controller takes its cue from your bike flipping about and not your rider (!) Fun is barely anywhere to be found and you can't even turn your bike round to head back up the track in the opposite direction so as to cause a huge crash. If you must buy this, you may as well get the first release which is available on Platinum for half the price.

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Review copyright © Dominic Robinson, 2002.