Arcade motorcycle racing jumps clear across the Atlantic and makes a return in Motorcycle Club from Maximum Games and European developer Kylotonn Entertainment. Not to be confused with Sony’s Drive Club even if the logo may have been designed to do so, Motorcycle Club throws an extra equation into a otherwise simplistic and low budget racer that tasks human riders to literally swap bikes mid-race based on the current road conditions. Sadly the AI riders weren’t privy to this unique gift and that unbalance translates into the equivalent of a solid half-lap head start.
The idea, or gimmick — let’s call it what it is — of switching between three bikes at will while racing plays off the concept of drop-in and drop-out cooperative play, or simply switching between weapons in a first-person shooter based on the skill and armory of an opponent. A standard bike, super bike and custom bike are selected before each race from the main garage menu, and any of those bikes can be used at any point in the race.
The custom model handles rougher terrain like potholes and bumps efficiently, while the super bike is especially fast. These two bikes work so well to counterbalance one another that there’s little if any need to pay any attention to the regularly neglected standard bike.
AI racers can only watch as their human opponents swap bikes like super humans to maintain speed or control over challenging terrain as they’re stuck with the standard bike and ironically “human” abilities. Their jealousy is almost palpable while blowing past them on the super bike and there’s absolutely nothing they can do to catch up. At first this unbalanced mechanic is comical, but a few races in and it sucks the challenge out of Motorcycle Club like a siphon does to gas from a tank.
It’s a good thing that a head-on crash into a wall is the only way to “die” or the AI riders would need bathroom breaks. Bikes bounce off walls like bumper cars and into each other like bowling pins. Watching AI racers hit walls during turns and slam into each other as well as obstacles might validate why they cannot swap. If the intelligence to navigate basic driving maneuvers is flawed then any extra variables might result in a demolition derby or the game actually blowing up.
Finishing position is one of two ways race completion is scored. The other is via style points that accumulate for various skills challenges met such as how long a wheelie is held and how many times nailing a wall or opponent was narrowly avoided. There are markers here and there to hit for even more skills points, and jumps to send bikes soaring a whopping couple of feet tops into the air. Time spent trying to hit all the markers and focus on scoring style points will slow down the final finish time, and perhaps that was the design goal; to compensate for the ridiculously poor AI with other distractions in order to partially level the playing field.
Fully completing tournament mode requires running through 119 total races, many of which feature repeating tracks multiple times. Dumbfounding AI exists here as well so making that little extra effort to switch to custom and super bikes will result in blowing through at least the first 10 or so of these races with no challenge whatsoever. I couldn’t bring myself to go any further for fear of turning comatose.
In total there are 22 bikes from the likes of familiar names like Kawasaki, Honda, Suzuki, BMW, KTM, and Yamaha, though only three of them fall into the custom category. Unlocking bikes requires earning credits from races for unlocking various challenges and wins, then redundant and unnecessary time trials must be completed with each unlocked bike before it joins your garage for good.
While Motorcycle Club was a full $60 title in Europe, it was sliced in half to $30 for its North America debut. That price cut was a wise move as the game looks and plays like a budget indie title. The visuals are on par with PlayStation 3 games with maybe a couple extra spots of spit and shine. The heavy metal soundtrack is fairly atrocious and toxic to the ears, and the voice acting on par with what you would expect from an arcade racer. Different motorcycle engines should have signature noise that raises and lowers in pitch during the course of a race in a game of this day and age. All the bikes sound the same and run at the same monotonous, grinding tone.
The idea that you’re building a “club” with your different bikes and customized gear including suits, helmets and logos is a stretch at that, and online play to utilize these club members returns races where the only sounds waiting for other human opponents to show up are from crickets. A handful of AI racers will gladly jump in to cure loneliness, though. Yay?
Motorcycle Club never feels like it was trying to be something else, to compete with the big boys like Mario Kart or Gran Turismo, or even pay homage to the classic arcade motorcycle racer Road Rash. It’s all about the swapping gimmick –no simulation. A smidgen of adrenaline-fueled fun is present and both positive and negative challenges, such as never being in first place, are moderately fun to check off the list. That can’t cure a desire to swap in a different game than a different bike, an urge that takes hold less than a handful of races into a session.
Motorcycle Club was reviewed on PS4 and furnished by Maximum Games for the purposes of this review. It is available now for the PlayStation 3 and PlayStation 4.
