Review by:Tony Mitera

Motorcycle racing commands greater respect for understanding and obeying the laws of physics, as unlike automobile racing the position and balance of the rider is just as important as the power of the engine. Regardless of your level of skill MotoGP 10/11 allows you to recreate the feeling of guiding a two-wheeled rocket/deathtrap as you glide through turns and blast down long straightaways. However, virtually every aspect of the game has at least one nagging problem which cumulatively has a noticeable effect on the game.

The meat of the gameplay comes in the Career mode which allows for you to create your racer, design your team look, assemble a team, and then put rubber to the track as you race for the championship. As you participate in practice runs, qualifiers, and races you gain reputation levels based on how well you perform, successive levels of which unlock new bikes, sponsorship offers, and staff members. This system goes up for overtaking opponents, racing cleanly, and having the fastest lap or times whereas it drops as you collide with other racers, leave the track, or get overtaken.

You only have one staff slot at first which expands at higher levels, allowing you to hire PR managers and engineers. PR managers work to get your team the highest paying sponsors and ideally while having the least strict placing requirements, whereas engineers devote their time to finding new advances in your racing technology. You can assign engineers to research in one of four fields, and once done you can elect to spend the money to actually improve your ride. Handling both is a very abstract affair, essentially boiling down to just getting more money per race or increasing your bike’s stats such as top speed rather than worrying about individual components, but it does lend itself to some degree of strategizing off the track.

In the championship mode you strip out everything but the racetrack action, picking a real life racer to fill the shoes of and start putting some points on the leaderboard. This straightforward mentality extends to the online play as well which allows for little in the way of options or stat tracking and lets you participate in one-off races against up to 19 other racers. Finally, in the challenge mode the game plays in a much more arcade style which is essentially just fun, pick up and play styled racing.

It all takes a backseat to getting on the racetrack and making a name for yourself, which is an area in which the game unsuitably struggles. A lot of the physics involved with your bike as it takes hard corners or goes over small bumps in the track feels very natural, and changing speeds and turning all feels very fluid. There is no greater joy to be had in the game than when you are able to perfectly take a turn at best speed and just dominate the track, and when you do so you know it was a direct result of your own skill and ability.