Perseverance is the key to success
The precision needed to control a bike requires the utmost concentration. One slight touch on the backside of a competitor or a blade of grass can result in you being thrown of the track in spectacular style, chewing gravel does not feel good. Anyone who has played previous MotoGP games will be familiar with the controls but they will notice an increased need for focusing on the action. The tweaks to this technical part of the gameplay gives the rider the intensive experience that real-life MotoGP riders must face on a race to race basis. If you find it hard to direct your attention at one thing for, what can be, relatively long periods, than MotoGP won’t be for you; perseverance is the key to success in the finest MotoGP game to date – there you go I said it.
There are plenty of chances to practice the tracks in the qualifying sessions before each race and via the various challenges, which range from beating lap times to navigating corners at the required speed. Although I personally don’t have the skills required to beat most of these challenges, I gave up on PGR3’s cone based challenges rather too promptly, these challenges will give you the edge when racing for real and will also gain you some vital experience points.
Click for larger imageFor those who are interested in how the Xbox 360 pad is used to maneuver your vehicle I can tell you that there are two brake systems that control the front and back brakes, using the left and right triggers. Acceleration is achieved with the ‘A’ button and you can use the standard breaking system by pressing the ‘X’button. It’s a matter of applying both the back brake and the front brake at the appropriate time in order to navigate a corner with the greatest success – although I can’t tell you the exact mechanics of how this works, as I simply don’t know. You can also power slide around corners by double tapping the 'A' button but, time this incorrectly, and you'll spin the bike off track. No matter how many times I thought I had it sussed on Xbox live there would still be a dozen or so other racers come speeding past. However, rather than learning controls on your own offline through the training mode, online is the greatest place to get tips and improve your game.
Click for larger imageI personally have no clue on how to tweak and tune a bike in order to gain maximum performance but, online, I was inundated with tips on how I should set up the bike by fine tuning brakes, suspension and even amending tire compounds.
Online there are some superb options, including a spectator mode similar to Project Gotham Racing T.V where you can watch some of the best players in the World battling it out, and a stunt mode, where you compete with fellow gamers with who can pull off hte best tricks. The standard live options are there, which you see in most racers these days. These include ranked matches, full ranking statistics and match ups against players of a similar skill set - incidentally this doesn’t mean much as hardcore gamers often have more than one account and enjoy jumping in with noobs to extract the michael (take the p*ss). MotoGP 06 also features 16-player online racing, 4 player-split screen and a capture the track mode. Of course there’s also achievements to unlock such as finishing 50 Races online or offline and winning a career mode at legend level giving the game further depth and even more reason to carry on racing – damn it, the World Cup’s on don’t you know!
