MONSTER ENERGY SUPERCROSS 2
Italian studio Milestone has deeply rooted love for the race in its DNA. A company that has been developing only racing games for almost twenty-five years must have enough experience to handle any licensed series. Her repertoire includes such brands as MotoGP and WRC, but her own titles also complement her. Although these games sometimes can't reach higher marks in reviews, they still have no need for fans. Those eagerly await every new game that appears on the store shelf, and this is obviously noticed by licensees for the official Supercrosse World Cup. Between the players decided to promote this event, and so they commissioned Milestone to create the official Monster Energy SuperCross game.
However, the first episode of this series was released last year. Of course, we have also reviewed the game, but overall it has only a slightly above-average impression on us. Basically, it wasn't a bad race, but they had a lot of big flies. Twelve months passed as a snap of a finger and Milestone jumped on us with a continuation that could make the debut's ills easy to erase. The content-pumped game would be able to attract fans after not very impressive beginning and would convince us as well. But there was a lot of speculation and wishful thinking - let's see what the creators of the nearby West could do in less than a year at Monster Energy SuperCross 2.
As in real life, games that try to replicate to some extent a true experience in the virtual world must follow certain rules. This completely banal principle allows us to at least partially experience things that we would never have done otherwise. Similarly, driving on a car is much easier than on heavy bikes, in addition to mud. They are also aware of this in Milestone, and so a very important tutorial is waiting for you at the very beginning of the game, which will show you how to work with the bike, correct it in the air or how you should go through the curves in order to pass each section of the track with minimal time loss. After his passage, another very important task awaits you - creating your character. Monster Energy SuperCross 2 includes a fairly simple editor in which you can fold your preferred rider. If you are important to adjusting the appearance of virtual characters, you will return to this option continuously throughout the game, as the vast majority of items are conditioned by buying them for the virtual menu you receive by playing.
After the initial compulsory ride, we can slowly move to the real one. There are several modes available, especially single-player mode. Here you will find the possibility of a classic fast ride where you can choose all the parameters, from track, track conditions, through gameplay or difficulty settings, to riders. Time Trial mode, I think, doesn't need a more detailed description. However, career and championship modes look a little more interesting. Both modes were complex before I ran them, with really sophisticated options, as they should be the highlight of the game. First I chose a career where my pre-created rider becomes a professional with a great success. On this road, of course, we cannot miss the choice of a sponsor to support your activities. I have to admit that I was confused from this regime for the first few minutes. Probably because my expectations did not meet reality. Luckily, I was very quick, and realized that what seemed complicated to me at first glance was actually the most simple mode.
If you would expect some extensive competitions and spectacular growth in your career, stick to the ground. The game works in its accelerated and really boring system, in which you have a calendar. He has marked days of rest and free days, which you can fill in with one of four activities - either you do advertising activities, media / fans, training, or challenges. The first two are not worth talking, as they are only in the form of a maximum of five seconds of animation, where you give your hand to a fan, or stand back on your bike. Boring. The other two save it, so long as you don't finish them all. Especially the trainings are solved by the style of obtaining a sufficient number of stars of your chosen form of tracking. You can always choose only one type of training - turns, jumps and so on.
When you click through your week, classic races await at the end of the race, taking place at one of the available stadiums. Once you have completed your week, your week will end and you will be able to re-enter the whole cycle. Although a similar system is nothing new in the games, in this case, after a few tens of minutes, you can get very bored. Whatever. Career did not work, I moved to the next bigger mode - championships. And precisely at this point my expectations have slipped. Except for one of the available series - 250 East / West and 450, don't look for the next step in the championship. The whole principle is to play one race after another until the last lap. In it, the winner is determined and you can run again for the next wave of races. In both cases, this is a really strange approach for developers who could just make these regimes a pride of the game.
The last mode is Compound. It has been added to the previous game by DLC, but it is somewhat more extensive in the sequel. There are no major commitments for you in Compound, because it's about free driving and then racing. You have a larger open environment where you can go freely. Driving is a lot of acrobatics, so you can use the whole track to train and consolidate your riding skills. If I want to take this mode as a secondary content, it's definitely a great addition. After exhausting all off-line game modes, I moved to the last - multiplayer over the network. The simplicity of the previous modes is also present here, but this time it is not entirely harmful.
You can join the multiplayer game using either matchmaking or creating your own room to suit your preferences. However, players decide on the course to be driven. Of the few rides I had in this part of the game, I had only one very good feeling from one. I don't know where the problem was, but neither game was completely clean, so lag-free. In other games I do not have such problems. Often, the players leaped madly as they flew along the track. This would not be such a problem if such a UFO hadn't caught me off track a few times. Once more, the game was so stupid that even in normal driving, she reacted as if I had left the designated route. So I was constantly restarted to my original position, so I had to interrupt the race.
What I need to pick up is the driving experience. Monster Energy SuperCross 2 is very good on the visual side, thanks to Unreal Engine 4. The atmosphere of all available arenas is great. Especially the race in the rain has even bigger grades, as the track is well soaked and the mud is much more on the track than you would wish. All the mud you climb straight on the screen, you see worse and you still have to pay more attention to the right track to accidentally fall somewhere. Of course, a driving experience is also a good experience, which is also good. After just a few laps you can ride quite well without any previous experience, but with each other you come to various tricks as and where to get time and speed.
Different types of mud, jumps, sharp turns - all this can make your head tangibly, but training will make your error rate considerably lower. But what can increase it is not always the right physics. In the vast majority of cases, it works properly, but sometimes it can react exaggerated and you fly to the ground, nor do you know how. Especially contact with objects on the track at a lower speed makes the game a problem. At higher difficulty the game gives great attention to the effects. Since automatic balancing is turned off, it's important to correct the tilt of the rider in the air. However, the tutorial at the beginning will alert you to this. Certainly a positive part of the game is the track editor, which was also present in the previous section, and here did not undergo any major changes. So you can still create a simple and fast track. In principle, it is just about storing pre-prepared turns, straights, pools, jumps and other track elements to create a functional circuit. In addition, you can share this track with other players via the Internet.
Monster Energy SuperCross 2 offers fun races that are, unfortunately, packed into a considerably more boring form of play. Naoko offers several modes, but when you examine them, you find that they are considerably simplified and without a better idea. The official license means a lot of tracks, real riders or motorcycles, but in the whole game I couldn't find anything that could keep my attention long enough. The monotonous campaign alternates even more monotonous championship, which in turn adds a simple multiplayer. Even more so because the race itself, the driving model and visual presentation, is at a very decent level.