MXGP 24: The Official Game’s licensed label amounts to very little of its true identity. In reality, the title, developed by Artefacts Studio and published by Nacon, leaves the adrenaline-fueled appeal of professional motocross stranded from every want-to-be racer holding a game controller. While yearly sports titles can be controversial for their less ambitious approach to game design, they sell millions of copies each year for one primary reason: they are reliable. While I wish the same could be said about MXGP 24, especially as this game represents a return following a three-year absence, each race turned into a challenge of endurance in all the worst ways, offering me little incentive to return for another attempt. Crossing the finish line consistently fell short of being worth celebrating, leaving me less invested and involved in the sport than I would be if I were watching the action unfold in any other format.

The Dirty Details

The dirt-stained, dust-kicking presentation of motocross is absent from MXGP 24. Both graphically and audibly, the title reflects an experience generations behind contemporary hardware. The popping and sputtering of dirtbike engines resemble the sounds of a grumbling stomach ready for lunch. Flat textures and duplicated assets gave me all the more reason to keep my eyes on the road, where my biker’s pristine jersey billowing by the wind seemed out of place in a title so unconcerned to include details elsewhere. While nothing on display was aggressively awful or ugly, the combined mediocrity never amounted to the expected semblance of what an official game should have nailed down, leaving the spectacle of motocross sorely missing.

Faulty Equipment

Spending time on MXGP 24’s menus often proved to be a more trying experience than the races themself. Painfully generic music and an uninspired UI unintentionally ushered me to make hasty selections. There is nothing to fear, however, as what is available outside the gameplay represents a shallow selection of inclusions that don’t succeed in smoothing out the game’s rougher edges. Customization, an obvious addition, isn’t nearly as exciting as a motocross fan might desire. The line of branded bikes available is a nice start, with each varying in terms of speed, acceleration, and response. This same attention to detail is present in a collection of branded helmets. However, I came to find that the racing suits available consist of a more hollow array of options, unique only by pattern. Though any racing fan might expect the ability to choose boots, gloves, and more, the game doesn’t deliver on such detail.

Elsewhere, the menu presents a statistics screen, a level system, as well as the game’s core content, which comes in many different forms of motocross. Quick Race is the most straightforward option. Because of its pick-up-and-play nature, it became the method of gameplay I returned to most often. Time Attack replaces the competition of fellow racers with the clock. Season strings a series of races and rulesets together, allowing the player to participate in the 2024 FIM Motocross World Championship, a welcome inclusion for those invested in the sport. Daily Challenge offers the title’s only multiplayer content, promising ten-person lobbies that change rules daily. Although I wasn’t able to test this mode myself due to vacant lobbies, it’s worth noting that others also reported problems with matchmaking, including those who played the game closer to the launch. Otherwise, the mode Free Ride provides a map to drive around, although its small dimensions and lackluster environment reveal it as an afterthought to other modes. Career, MXGP’s most prominent offering, occupies the largest space on the main menu. As an answer to NBA 2K’s MyCareer or EA SPORTS FC’s Player Career, the mode includes elements of management, social media, and more in-between races to build up a sense of immersion and progression. Though initially the most endearing option, I quickly found its attempts at diversifying gameplay to resemble a disruption more than anything else.

The Reality of Racing

When it comes to most races, the player selects MX2 or MXGP, one of twenty maps, a weather option, and an official or custom racer. Format, which pertains to the time limit and number of laps raced, is also customizable, as is AI difficulty. After this, a bike setup screen allows the player to adjust the transmission, suspension, and brakes on their bike. Which slot they’d like to start from is another option. These options are nice, essential inclusions for a racing game but aren’t substantial enough to set one race apart from another. The way every race blends together is primarily due to the handling of the bikes themselves, which can be summarized quite easily. It’s fine. The bikes are weighty, provide a decent learning curve, and when they catch air, the mechanics can almost be appreciated. It was when my tires dug into the dirt once more that a staggering amount of outdated gameplay design intercepted such appreciation. The instantaneous teleportation received from straying off track is immersion-breaking and hardly poses a penalty. Because of this, I often felt dissociated from the maps as a whole, regardless of whether they represent the reality of motocross or not. The sentiment of the game feeling disjointed spreads beyond just the maps, as the AI is passable at best and eye-rolling at worst. While not game-breaking in any way, these opponents always act as if they are in their own world. Despite the plentiful number of crashes and collisions the AI caused, the aggression of motocross was never apparent to me. The reckless behavior always seemed to stem from a place of blatant disregard for the racetrack and its rules more than anything else.

Motocross has a solid history within video games, but MXGP 24: The Official Game falls short of the greats. Building up speed can never match the adrenaline expected when the player is, more often than not, interrupted in immersion-breaking ways. The competition can’t carry the same sort of rivalry found in sports when multiplayer options are scant and AI behaves a world away from holding a sense of realism. After a three-year absence, MXGP 24: The Official Game’s functions fine enough to let players cross the finish line, but no first-place victory validates what is flawed about this package.

In a gaming landscape flooded with roguelikes, looter-shooters, and open-world sprawl, Empyreal boldly steps into the fray with a fresh sci-fi aesthetic and an ambition to blend deep philosophy with slick, skill-based combat. Developed by Silent Games, Empyreal invites players into a crumbling megastructure built by a forgotten civilisation, all in the name of loot, lore, and legacy. It’s an alluring package on paper, but does it live up to its potential?

What is Empyreal

At its narrative core, Empyreal explores humanity’s fractured place in a decaying galaxy. You play as a mercenary explorer hired to delve into the Monolith—a vast, vertical world filled with traps, secrets, and deadly automatons. There’s a thread of philosophical introspection woven through the game’s sparse dialogue and cryptic lore entries. Themes of duality, identity, and evolution bubble to the surface, but they rarely command the spotlight. It’s clear the developers had higher narrative aspirations, but much of the storytelling feels fragmented, almost too eager to remain mysterious rather than meaningful.

That said, the setting is atmospheric. The Monolith is stunning: impossibly tall chambers, alien flora clinging to steel, and glimmers of ancient technology pulsing in the shadows. It’s a place that feels lived-in and lost, creating a constant sense of melancholic wonder.

A swing, and a miss

Empyreal’s combat has opened up with a lot of promise, but ultimately falls short due to overwhelming enemies and a lack of flourish. The game offers three weapon archetypes: the precise and versatile Glaive, the slow but tanky Mace & Shield combo, and the explosive Cannon. Each weapon class brings unique abilities that reward timing and positioning. Perfect timing on dodges and blocks will leave the enemies stunned and vulnerable, which gives the player time to deal big amounts of damage. Although in theory this combat system is a tried and tested one, Empyreal simply doesn’t deliver. The game doesn’t offer a lock-on feature, which makes keeping track of enemies difficult with their sporadic movements. The amount of ranged enemies combined with a lack of clear visuals to suggest they’re shooting from off-screen creates frustrating moments of the player getting stun-locked by a dozen off-screen projectiles. On top of the frustrating parts, the animations leave a lot of room for improvement.

Players can unlock and equip a wide array of abilities tied to their chosen weapon style—some focus on raw damage, others on healing or crowd control. Building diversity is a genuine strength. A well thought-out arsenal of abilities does create some powerful combos, leaving the player satisfied of a perfectly executed combat encounter. But in my opinion, it does not outweigh the flaws mentioned before.

Gameplay loop that lands

It’s a clever idea—one that provides replay value and encourages a degree of strategy before every run. But it can also feel inconsistent. Some Cartograms lead to satisfying, rewarding encounters; others result in poorly balanced death traps that feel unfair rather than challenging. There’s fun to be had in mastering these randomised layers, and for the most part, I enjoyed the gameplay loop of farming new gear and exploring new cartograms.

Setting and aesthetics

Visually, Empyreal is striking. The particle effects, dynamic lighting, and eerie soundscapes craft a cohesive, moody world. However, technical hiccups—including occasional frame dips, clunky enemy hitboxes, and some UI clumsiness—pull you out of the experience. These aren’t deal-breakers, but they suggest the polish isn’t quite up to the standard set by the game’s visual ambition.

Empyreal is a game of brilliant ideas and passionate design, executed with varying levels of success. Its combat is familiar but lacklustre, its setting memorable, yet the animations and detail fall short, and its systems—like the Cartogram and Aether Touched mechanics—boldly experiment with formula. Yet the game sometimes gets in its way with uneven difficulty, fragmented storytelling, and a layer of complexity that doesn’t always pay off.

If you’re a fan of action RPGs with a taste for mystery and don’t mind a bit of roughness around the edges, Empyreal might just be worth exploring. But for players expecting a polished, emotionally resonant journey with rogue-lite and looter mechanics, I would suggest looking elsewhere.