MotoGP 18: the review

If we also consider the breaks, Milestone has been involved in making the video games for the MotoGP series for a very long time. The Spanish team has racing in their blood, that's for sure, and since the beginning, when the company was still called Graffiti, it has shown that it knows how to get the most out of any hardware. However, the situation of the various gaming platforms has changed profoundly over time, and so certain technical solutions have begun to accuse the excessive weight of an increasingly strong, increasingly organized competition, able to count on powerful unified tools. It is therefore no coincidence that Milestone's 2018 was inaugurated by their first racer powered by Unreal Engine 4, Gravel, and that all the franchises of the Milanese studio have adopted the same technology in order to aspire to an unprecedented degree of competitiveness on the scene. international.



MotoGP 18: the review

The question is of course obvious: considering the characteristics of the graphics engine developed by Epic Games, was it the best choice? Certainly it was not a small change: as we already pointed out in the tried, the adoption of the new engine has brought with it big steps backwards on the structural front, probably due to the fact that so many assets had to be reworked. MotoGP 18 therefore starts all over again on the content level, cutting the significant novelty of the managerial career in favor of a range of traditional options, which include the standard career, the championship, fast races, time attacks and the competitive online sector, which in future will open up to a number of interesting eSports facets.


You are like my motorcycle

If it is true that Milestone has chosen to switch to the Unreal Engine with a bit of delay, after having endured the justified criticism due to the use of a proprietary engine that has never really been able to compete with the most famous productions. in the racing genre, at the same time no one can say that the Spanish team has ever skimped on the thickness of their titles. In this case we are not talking about the structure, which as mentioned in MotoGP 18 does not go beyond the more traditional and inflated modes, but rather about the gameplay and its ramifications, of a driving model that once again can teach everyone how to create a truly progressive system, and which in its many adjustments includes the possibility of adapting the experience to the most varied tastes, allowing us to "grow" from race to race, increasing whether we want the degree of difficulty or the realism of physics, activate or not the realistic damage and tire wear, limit ourselves to a few laps of the track and just the race session or face the weekends in their entirety, counting in the end on directly proportional awards in terms of points.



MotoGP 18: the review

The situation changes substantially depending on our choices, and in this sense there is also an increase in general difficulty, a greater incidence of falls (deadly for the purposes of the ranking, but made less bitter by the presence of the now inevitable "rewind" function) and a more realistic behavior of the bike and pilot, aided by animations that we seem to have never seen before in the series, as well as more convincing physics when an impact occurs. The key concept is that in short, with MotoGP 18 you have fun riding, you enjoy every overtaking (even more so when you have to sweat it) and you never tire of ringing laps, which in the end makes the difference between a racer of race and a patchy experience. Having said that, however, on the front of the opponents' artificial intelligence, things have not actually improved much, with the tendency to represent two situations quite the opposite: the lack of setting errors by the other pilots but at the same time the practically constant to film them at the detachment, during which it often happens that someone comes at us without therefore perceiving our presence.

MotoGP 18: the review

A career man

At the service of this gameplay-centric vision we find the many facets of the MotoGP 18 career, which he will see us try the climb starting from a minor league, in a small team, and try to get the best placements to sign with the most famous teams, thus going to use the points earned on the track (the result of a very detailed analysis of our style) to improve the bike as regards engine, brakes, suspension , chassis and aerodynamics. Similarly, before racing we will be able to modify the setup by changing the tire compound, adjusting the suspension and steering, varying the gear ratios, electronics and braking system, with the possibility of saving the tuning in order to be able to then call back quickly. Or put ourselves in the hands of the track engineer for an automatic review focused on our needs.



MotoGP 18: the review

In short, on the structural front there are no real news, but the contents have been implemented with some care and the interface is particularly well refined, stylish and balanced, with an excellent layout of the controls and multimedia contents that introduce us to each new location. The tracks of the official season are all present, as well as the real drivers (not all made faithfully, in truth), selectable to face fast races or an entire championship. Online multiplayer allows you to join sessions that are already open or to create private matches for up to twelve participants, and during our test we found that matchmaking was working properly, which however will need to be verified with the game in stores.

MotoGP 18: the review

PlayStation 4 Trophies

The fifty-one MotoGP 18 Trophies are mainly linked to victories, on certain circuits and in certain conditions, but there is also a whole series of achievements to be unlocked by playing a certain number of online matches or by taking the fundamental steps in a career perspective.

Cross and delight

So we come to the technical realization, as mentioned at the beginning one of the key points of MotoGP 18. Did the transition to Unreal Engine 4 really solve the problems of the series on the graphic front? Yes and no. On the one hand, there is no doubt that the new engine guarantees a better rendering of polygonal models, which are detailed and realistic, as well as driven by more convincing physics; and in the same way we appreciated the representation of the various weather conditions, unfortunately static and not dynamic as it would now be expected from the latest generation driving games. What certainly turns your nose upside down is the transition from the sixty frames per second of the Milestone proprietary engine to the thirty frames per second of the UE4. which, although stable (on PlayStation 4 Pro there are very few uncertainties), are far from the optimal target for this type of experience.


MotoGP 18: the review

The point is that the glance of the tracks does not justify such a drastic and renounced choice, perhaps the daughter of inexperience with the new engine or (but we hope not) of the well-known difficulties that the Epic Games engine encounters with the fast streaming of contents, also highlighted in the case of MotoGP 18 by textures that are slow to appear during the first shots of each scenario. The realization of the pilots, the staff members, the "umbrella girls" and some dated effects (see the champagne) still require a lot of attention, while as regards the audio sector we have an excellent performance of the engines and the engaging commentary of Guido Meda , unfortunately limited to the introductory phases of each grand prix.

Comment

Tested version PlayStation 4 Resources4Gaming.com

7.2

Readers (15)

7.0

Your vote

MotoGP 18 offers a solid, engaging, demanding, multifaceted and widely adjustable experience, as has become tradition for the Milestone series. The strength of the game lies in its ability to modify the driving model based on our needs, eventually leading us to grow from race to race gradually giving up some help, until we become really competitive and maybe try our luck with some online challenge. The change of graphic engine, with the passage to Unreal Engine 4, convinces from the point of view of general quality but not of performance, given the limit of thirty frames per second. Unfortunately, the new technical solution has also led to heavy sacrifices on the content front, limiting the set of modes available to the more traditional and tested ones.

PRO

  • Convincing, deep and adjustable driving pattern
  • All the drivers and official tracks of the championship
  • Unreal Engine 4 has improved visual rendering ...
AGAINST
  • ... but halved the frame rate
  • Less content than the previous edition
  • The eSports section is still an unknown
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