MotoGP 22: Fixes The Game Needs

Races take many forms in gaming, from hyperrealistic F1 simulations in which every inch of rubber on a tire moves the way it would in real life to arcade-style space racers that let players bombard one another with rockets and black hole guns. The long-running MotoGP franchise is all about the premier class of motorcycle road races.

In the game, players are treated to a faithful simulation of the sport, using the best machines and top talents in the sport to try to edge out their competition and be the first across the finish line. Like other annual titles, however, MotoGP 22 isn't without its flaws. Here are some of the biggest fixes the game needs right now.

5 Audio Upgrades

The sights and sounds of a race are one thing that every racing sim needs to nail if it's going to feel realistic. Even if they don't affect the actual mechanics of the race, they're critical for maintaining immersion, and in a series like MotoGP, feeling immersed in the race is the whole point.

MotoGP 22 looks beautiful, but its sound design leaves something to be desired. This is particularly true when it comes to the noise of the bikes themselves. In most cases, there's no meaningful difference from the way that the bikes sounded in the previous game. Annual releases don't need to reinvent the entire franchise with every title, but they need to give players a reason to buy the upgrade. When the main draw is the bikes themselves, it's simply not good enough for the hum and rev of those spectacular machines to sound exactly the same as the old edition.

4 AI Tweaks

While time trials have a respectable space of their own in the racing genre, pitting players against their own personal best and sometimes going so far as to include a ghost of their past self on the track for easy comparison, most racing games pit the player head to head with other drivers. Barreling down straightaways shoulder to shoulder with another bike or edging a rival driver out around a particularly nasty turn are often some of the most thrilling parts of these games.

The driver AI in MotoGP 22 has improved in some areas, but it still has one major downfall: drivers are too aggressive. In many cases, the AI will cut the player off, bump them, barrel into the pack, and otherwise ride in an unrealistically aggressive manner. The issue isn't that these things never happen in races; the issue is that these things don't happen with the frequency that they do in MotoGP 22. Frequent collisions result, which is frustrating when the player is doing their best not only to win but also to ride as one would in an actual race. It's not game-breaking, but the overly aggressive AI is an impediment in too many races.

3 Mode Improvement

A racing game doesn't necessarily need to have amazing lore, but it does need a decent amount of variety, often in the form of different game modes. These range from abstract managerial modes in which the player is responsible for directing the activities of an entire team but doesn't personally participate in games to "Create a Star"-style modes in which the player leads their custom character through their career from their very first training session until the final awards ceremony.

MotoGP 22 offers a healthy selection of modes, but, unfortunately, these modes inherit too much from past entries in the franchise. Other than updated models, there is no compelling case for playing managerial career mode in MotoGP 22 over MotoGP 21. Reskinning the same content with only minor tweaks is a favorite strategy of many annual titles, and, unfortunately, MotoGP 22 falls victim to that same decision. The game isn't irredeemable, but for it to have real longevity it needs a fresh take on its existing modes.

2 Bug Squashing

Squashing bugs is a challenge in any game. Code has a way of spitting out unexpected results, even if it is constructed with great care. The larger and more complex the game, the more issues with bugs there will be. Bugs and weird glitches are simply part of game development, and it's not a meaningful strike against a game if a few of them are still around upon the game's release. Games with complicated physics are particularly prone to bugs, and MotoGP 22 is no exception. Bikes, riders, and tracks all have a number of glitches.

The game is by no means broken, and many of its bugs aren't even so glaring that the player will notice them right away, but the more one plays the more evident these bugs become. The main problem is that due to their abundance, one is left feeling that the game lacks polish overall. It feels rushed, whether its production actually was or wasn't. This feeling is especially painful given that MotoGP 22 is an annual title, rather than a brand-new one. One would hope that the game would have at least rid itself of the same flaws that plagued previous titles in the series, but instead, it inherited them. Players who weren't particularly bothered by this in previous games probably won't be here either, but that doesn't improve the situation.

1 Greater Innovation

MotoGP 22 isn't a terrible game. It features exciting races, solid physics, fun tracks, and a variety of other features that make it worth picking up if someone has had their eye on the franchise for a while but has never taken the plunge. Indeed, players new to MotoGP could do far worse than MotoGP 22 as their introduction to the franchise.

The issue - one that affects virtually every problem the game has in one way or another - is that MotoGP 22 lacks significant innovation. The previous MotoGP games were equally solid entries in the motorsports scene, and because so little has changed between games, the player doesn't have much reason to pick up MotoGP 22 other than that it happens to be the newest. Maybe with updates MotoGP 22 will reach the full potential that the creative team behind it is capable of. Until then, it's just more of the same.