MotoGP 4

The detail that sticks with me about this game is how much of it depends on the rider rather than the bike. Lean too hard, shift your body late, and the machine tells you about it through a front end that tucks or a rear that steps out. It is a series that spent its early years apologizing for being a console game, and by this fourth instalment on PS2 it had mostly stopped.

The game was developed by Climax and published by THQ in 2004, riding the official MotoGP licence and the real riders and teams that came with it. That licence mattered in the sixth generation. Bike racing had no Gran Turismo to lean on, so authenticity of names, liveries and circuits carried real weight, and Climax understood that the fans buying it wanted the paddock they watched on Sunday television.

What separates it from the pack of motorcycle racers of its time is the handling model. Braking is the skill that counts. Brake early and clean, tip in, and get on the throttle before the exit, and you are rewarded; carry a car-style mindset into a hairpin and you will be lying in the gravel. There are assists to soften this, and the difference between playing with and without them is large. Turning them off is where the game starts to feel like what it is aiming at.

It has aged unevenly. The PS2 hardware shows in the pop-up and the flat trackside scenery, and the sense of speed is better on the fastest bikes than on the slow ones. Crash animations are stiff, and the AI can be oddly passive in the middle of the pack. Those are real flaws, and they are the standard tax of the period.

Still, the core idea survives. A racer that asks you to respect corner entry and lets you feel the bike's weight shift is rarer than it ought to be, even now. Played on its own terms, it is a rough but honest attempt to make two wheels feel like something other than four wheels with the doors removed.