Dom Robinson reviews

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THQ

Price: £39.99 Players: 1-16 Widescreen: Yes 60Hz: No Dolby Digital 5.1 sound: Yes Xbox Live-enabled: Live Some games are made great, some are born great... and some are better than sex. MotoGP 2 on the Xbox fits in the latter category. The basis of the game is simple - choose from one of many riders, and ride around more tracks than you can shake a stick at. The better you do, the more tracks and riders you'll unlock for later. It's also possible to tweak your bike and any game specifics to your own exacting standards, but when I first played the original online I didn't go to bed until the sun had come up. As such, you'll be unlikely to play this in single player mode if you have Xbox Live enabled between your console and PC. There's so much fun to be had racing round the tracks and trading wisecracks and (gentle) insults.

Playing the online demo for the first game which came with the Xbox Live Starter Package was a revelation in itself, given how the Playstation 2 games were such dogs. Graphically you really feel like you're there. Glorious sunshine, torrential rain - all aspects of weather within are recreated perfectly. The bikes zoom around the track in pixel-perfect style and the competition really heats up when you're all jostling for position after the start of a race. I couldn't find a widescreen setting, but I have a WS TV and it's obvious that it's configured itself correctly for it. This time round there's also better camera angles when you take a tumble from your bike and once a race is over there's the ability to watch the replays in slo-mo, forwards, backwards - any way you like. The game comes with a selection of tunes that are well worth a spin round the tarmac to listen to, but this is one of those Xbox titles which allows you to hear your favourite music as you go and my album of choice as I type this is David Bowie's underestimated and critically-panned 1987 album, Never Let Me Down. In game sound is Dolby Digital 5.1 and this makes as good a job as it can do since it's not the most taxing outing for your speakers, but then racing games were never known for being more than the rasp of an engine or three.

One thing blighted the online demo but has now been rectified - it is now possible to ensure that any idiots taking it upon themselves to go round the track backwards do not become the scurge of the track as they smack into people trying to win a race. Yes, there's now an option to make collisions forward-only. As I mentioned earlier, new riders and tracks are unlockable. Also, you'll be able to view highlights of each track, access the 'legend' difficulty level and play mirrored and reversed versions of each track depending on whether you can pass muster as the game requires. If I had one gripe about Moto GP2 it's that when I play Live, I can't hear everyone. It's meant to be more realistic that you can only hear those nearby to you, but even then that doesn't make sense since on a race with few riders you'll still be able to hear and talk to those positionally in front and behind you even if they're plenty distance away from you. It's annoying when you're having a jokey conversation with someone and they fall outside of earshot and you can no longer chat. Why are you still reading this? Click on the Amazon link above and get online with this game. Then, when your ass is being whupped by some Frenchies, you too can snort comically back at them. Yes, Moto GP2 is an immense amount of fun but not the title to restore diplomatic relations with those people across the channel.

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Review copyright © Dominic Robinson, 2003.