After a long wait, MotoGP 24 is here.
MotoGP 24 is the official game of the 2024 MotoGP season featuring all of the bikes, riders and tracks from the real-life series.
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Once again, the Career Mode has been the focus of improvements from MotoGP 23. Milestone has also focused on improving the handling and accessibility of this year's MotoGP game, so have these gambles paid off?
Revamped Career
Career Mode is the bread and butter of the MotoGP game series. MotoGP 23 introduced big changes to the career, and the same is true again with MotoGP 24, as riders can now change teams between seasons thanks to the new Riders Market.
This is the case both within MotoGP and between categories. This means if riders perform well enough, they can eventually move from Moto3 to MotoGP.
You can opt to enable this before starting your first season, allowing every player to have a unique experience in Career Mode.
Your performance on the track and interactions on MotoGP 24's fictional social media directly affect your reputation and relationships with teams and riders. You can be winning all the races, but if you're conducting yourself poorly online, some teams might not want to sign you.
These might seem like small changes, but they make a substantial difference. Not only will it have been difficult for Milestone to convince the real-life teams and sports to allow this, but these also help to keep the game fresh even after several seasons.
It mirrors what we've seen in other officially licensed sports games such as Formula 1 and EA Sports FC for years now, making the Riders Market a very welcome addition.
Gameplay improvements
There are few better games for bike enthusiasts than the MotoGP series. However, MotoGP games haven't always been very welcoming to new players. Thankfully, Milestone has addressed this in MotoGP 24.
For starters, the bikes are noticeably more stable, with handling that is less prone to understeer like in previous entries.
This allows players to opt for setups geared towards overall speed rather than stability, encouraging you to push the bike to its limits more often.
That being said, if you want to be the fastest rider around and beat the top-level AI, you'll still need to be rapid. The difficulty ceiling hasn't changed, but the barrier to entry is significantly more accessible.
Other alterations, such as the adaptive difficulty that changes the AI's speed to match yours, also help novices get to grips with the game. This can be a little hit or miss, but for the most part, it does a good job of finding the sweet spot for AI difficulty.
Other changes
Sprint races have been a noteworthy addition to the real-life calendar. These are still in the MotoGP game, and you'll be asked if you want to include them in your MotoGP 24 Career Mode experience.
You can also create a customized calendar in Career Mode, tailoring your single-player experience to include your favorite tracks.
While Historical Tracks remain, they aren't available in the Career Mode. The MotoGP Academy training mode returns as well, offering tutorials and tests to improve riders' skills.
The in-game stewards have received an upgrade and you'll be able to see what they're investigating in real-time during a race. You'll notice notifications pop-up on the right-side of the screen for riders cutting corners and causing collisions.
The stewards have the power to enact a bunch of different penalties, but you will be hard pressed to see the AI pick up any penalties through a race.
The graphics, sound, and overall feel of the game are impressive but haven't improved much since 2023. This is likely because MotoGP 24 isn't a current-gen exclusive.
Verdict
When it comes to bike video games, nobody does it better than Milestone. Once again, they've upped their game in MotoGP 24.
The Riders Market adds longevity to Career Mode, and the more forgiving handling model makes MotoGP 24 accessible to inexperienced gamers.
It's a bit disappointing that there are no new game modes like the excellent Nine scenario mode introduced in MotoGP 22, but enough strides have been made in other areas to make MotoGP 24 a significant upgrade over MotoGP 23.
MotoGP 24 races onto PC, PS5, PS4, Xbox Series X|S, and Xbox One on May 2nd.
Are you looking forward to playing MotoGP 24? What do you think? Let us know what you think about it in the comments below!
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