Review — MotoGP 20

While the actual championship might be postponed, you can still experience the thrill of the MotoGP World Championship in MotoGP 20.

A year has passed since we’ve gotten our hands on MotoGP 19, which saw a lot of improvements in the motor racing simulation game made by Italian developer Milestone Srl. This edition of the franchise is a bit special though as the official competition was postponed due to the Corona virus pandemic. Result of this is that the bikes and liveries of the 2020 season were not present when the game launched and we can still expect an update for MotoGP 2 and MotoGP3 and the addition of the Red Bull MotoGP Rookies Cup and the MotoE class. These are strange times indeed, but this doens’t mean you should wait to discover this latest entry in the MotoGP franchise.

Racer and Manager

A new edition of a sports game does have to offer more than just an update of the season to be worth the investment after all. The biggest change you’ll find in the career mode. Here, the managerial dimension of the career mode makes its return after being absent for two years. Luckily, they integrated it in the careers instead of having two careers like in MotoGP 2017. While your main activity will still be racing, you’ll also have to manage the team this time around. This includes hiring your Personal Manager, Data Analyst and Chief Engineer, negotiate your contracts, assigning R&D projects to your engineers to improve your bike, participate in winter and mid-season testing etc.

This managerial element gives the career a much needed added depth, as you don’t have just the races to care for. For the teams, you can both race for the existing teams or join a newly formed (fictional) team. When you chose a new team, you’ll get to drive with an existing bike but you get the option to create the livery of the team. Each team also has race goal and championship goal to which you can work towards to. But depending on your reputation, some teams will have no interest in you, so you’ll have to prove yourself and make a name for yourself to reach the top in MotoGP.

One aspect I also enjoyed in the career, is that you can immediately start in the MotoGP championship if you want to. Whereas in previous games, you had to start in a lower discipline like the Red Bull Rookie Cup for example. On the other side of the spectrum, what I really didn’t get is why you can’t see wich engineer is already assigned to a project when you want to select one of them from the list to add to a project. Couldn’t they just add a little marker for this? Now, I often added someone to a project who was already assigned to another one, which was really annoying.

The Basics

Aside from the revamped career mode, you’ll find the usual game modes for a racing game. Under Quick Modes, you’ll find Grand Prix (single race), Time Trial and Championship. For every race, you can chose whether you also want to participate in the practice sessions and qualifying sessions or only the race. This also goes for the Career mode of course. There’s also a renewed Historic Mode where you can undertake various challenges wich will give you credits. Those credits can be spent in the Historic Market where you can buy historic riders and bikes to use in the Quick Modes.

Next to the singleplayer content, you can also enjoy some online multiplayer action. There’s nothing really remarkable here, the game offers what it needs to offer. You can chose online sessions from the lobbies list or create your own public or private match. There’s also a Race Director Mode, where you can change the starting positions of the players, assign penalties during or after the race, decide the race settings and notofy players that they are ‘Under Investigation’ after a collision or other incident. This mode seems more suited for the Esports season than casual play of course, but it’s a nice addition.

Crossing the Finish Line

As for the other games developed by Milestone Srl. the quality of the franchise has been slowly but steadily increasing. While there are some issues that are still present year after year, like the mediocre facial animations or the long loading times, this is a pretty great racing game overall. With its various disciplines and wide selection of riders, bikes and tracks there’s plenty of content present in the game, especially if you take the historic bikes and riders into account. Improvements we saw last year like the dedicated servers for multiplayer and the neural A.I., dubbed ANNA are present again in this edition. If you want to learn more about the neural A.I., be sure to read Walter’s review of MotoGP 2019.

Compared to last year’s edition, the developers also improved the costumization option. Expanding on the helmet customization, you can now also edit stickers, racing numbers, the lower-pack patch and liveries of the bikes. This way, you can truly race in the style you want. Furthermore, they improved the riding physics, which were already very good to begin with, and the rider models for a much more realistic experience. If I were to give one final comment, it would be that after playing TT Isle of Man: Ride on the Edge 2, I did miss the sensation of speed here that this game offered. Something to look forward to for the future?

4/5

Reviewed on PlayStation 4.
Download code provided by the publisher.