When it comes to sports I have to admit that Motorcross wouldn’t be in my top five sports to put on the TV to watch. But then some sports, especially vehicle based sports do transport over to video games and I can enjoy them that way. So when MXGP Pro landed for me I was curious to see if it fell into the arcade sports style game or if it was more simulators based which with me being full on arcade gameplay fan over is a big factor of whether not I enjoy the game.
MXGP Pro focuses on the Motocross Championship and puts you in the role of a pro racer aiming to win that Championship by competing across twenty one tracks with sixty one riders to pick. Visually this game is stunning in the tracks and locations that you can race on so if you are a Motocross fan then the effort put in by the devs to recreate each of the tracks will enhance them even more when playing the game. The audio effects are great as well for all the bikes and very satisfying when screeching round the gravel corners on the tracks.
This game has a very punishing learning curve I found although fans of previous games will no doubt have more practice with it but for me, even with the tutorials and early on tracks I found it took me far too long to get to grips with the mechanics to not feel like I was messing up for the first hour or so of gameplay. Whilst the game does provide tools to learn, it also punishes you for not getting a handle on the gameplay pretty harshly which for me left me feeling out of my depth rather than just picking it up and playing which was frustrating to say the lease. More experienced players with this style of racer will have an easier time I am sure, and this really is a game for those who are experienced in this type of racing game.
That said, once I had managed to get the basics well enough to try my hand at the championship but the margin for error is pretty tight. I could make many compilation videos of me messing up that would forever torment me. This is certainly a less arcade style of racing game and if you can click with the gameplay you will no doubt get that rush of success far more than someone like me who constantly swore at the TV when I missed a corner or over shot a jump. The game certainly has enough variety in bikes to help you find the one that suits you because picking a more powerful bike before becoming comfortable with the mechanics will cause more crashes and rage moments for you. The attention to detail comes in again here as well as the bikes do all feel different enough to help find the one that works and are not just cosmetic in variation.
The physics can be played with to make it a little easier but playing it as intended is definitely a challenge even for experienced players of this genre which makes this a rather niche game instead of a pick up and play racer which makes it hard to recommend outside of fans of the genre. It certainly captures everything about Motocross that you would expect from different teams, sponsors and bikes to choose from and there is a good amount of tracks and challenges to keep you going but I do feel that the difficulty spike makes this a tough one to recommend.
Whilst a game that die-hard Motocross gaming fans will no doubt relish, MXGP Pro is just too much on the full simulator experience for me that prevented it from being fun and just made me turn to more arcade racer experiences like The Crew 2 instead. Controls are tricky to master making some of the tracks very challenging and overall gave me a frustrating time which I never felt fully comfortable with but the visuals and content made me wish I was better at the game in order to really appreciate it more.
