➤ Two wheels are better than four! 🎮

It is certainly not the first time that we welcome the advent of a videogame product officially linked to the world of MotoGP, but after the Namco Bandai titles first and then Climax, here is a turning point in the management of the franchise: the license has in fact been purchased. exclusively from Capcom, which has entrusted the Milanese team Milestone with the development of a racing game inspired by the last motorcycle season. So let's see how our compatriots fared in the not easy task of offering a convincing course simulation on Wii.

I move, you move, he moves

Milestone is certainly not the latest arrival when it comes to racing games: starting from the beginnings with Screamer up to the very recent Superbike World Championship 08, the developers of our house have accumulated a considerable cultural baggage on the genre, which unfortunately has not been put to fruit satisfactorily in this version of MotoGP 08 for Wii. The initial impact with the Capcom product, however, is more than discreet: in terms of the modes made available, the game has a good amount of elements that are attractive to two-wheel enthusiasts. Career and Championship certainly constitute the beating heart of the entire package, with the first requiring the user to start from the 125 with his own alter-ego and win race after race in order to take home the premier class trophy. From this point of view, the little space allowed to the player in terms of customizing the motorcycle turns up the nose: only four parameters can be modified, in addition to the possibility - definitely useless - to change team at the end of the season. The second section is more conventional, which simply allows you to impersonate one of the official drivers of the tournament (the data are obviously updated to last year) and to accumulate as many points as possible, without having to start from the basics. To underline the Challenge mode, including 50 scenarios in which you are called to reach certain objectives in order to progress: you therefore find yourself having to complete a race with worn tires, to complete a lap following a particular trajectory, to overcome a certain number of opponents and so on. The inevitable Timed Race and Fast Race do not need to be explained, while a pull of the ears must be made to Milestone for the bad management of the Tutorial: instead of explaining in detail how to ride your bike, the developers have thought (badly ) to throw the user on the track without too many compliments, limiting himself to showing a note on the screen when particularly serious mistakes are made or juggled flawlessly. In short, anything but a useful experience to learn the tricks of the trade.

Power is nothing without a controller

It is painful to note that, even in the case of MotoGP 08, the unique Wii control system proves to be more of a limit that holds back the gameplay of the product, rather than an opportunity to expand the genre to new horizons. Milestone had the good intuition to offer three different steps of complexity depending on the player's attitude: Arcade therefore allows you to forget about the laws of physics, while Simulation puts them into practice in a decidedly rigorous way, with Advanced acting as a happy medium between the two extremes. Too bad that the poor precision of the control system via motion sensor makes the more realistic setting substantially inapplicable, and - theoretically - even more interesting: at this juncture, manage the bike through oscillations of the Remote (to be held in a horizontal position just as if it were the handlebars of a motorcycle) is a titanic undertaking, considering how easy it is to take a boat or tighten the curves too much, finding yourself with your face on the asphalt.

Removing from the deck also the Arcade mode, which is really too simplistic, the only Advanced setting remains, far from guaranteeing the user a particularly fun or plausible experience. Things improve slightly if you use the Nunchuck analog to control the bike, but not enough to render MotoGP 08 a valid exponent of the genus. Insipid from a playful point of view, the Milestone work also fails to compensate for this gap with a particularly brilliant audiovisual system: beyond the meager design of the menus, the title displays graphics that are barely acceptable, if not downright mediocre. While trying to overlook the gray and bare scenarios that are the background to the races (it is still circuits), it remains a fairly approximate realization of bikes and riders, rough from the point of view of polygonal complexity and textures and absolutely improvable for that concerning animations.

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We are sorry to have to reject Milestone's first approach to the world of MotoGP, but the Wii version of the Capcom product has shown sins that are anything but venial: beyond a subdued technical realization and a playful offer as rich as boring , the game mainly suffers from an unsatisfactory driving model, penalized by a motion sensor control system that leaves a lot to be desired. Dedicated only to Wii users desperate for a motorcycle simulation.