Developer: Milestone S.r.l.
Publisher: Milestone S.r.l.
Platforms: PlayStation 4, Xbox One, PC
Tested on: PlayStation 4
Valentino Rossi: The Game – Review
Racing games are often subcategorized by the vehicles you can drive. This often segregates players. Players who enjoy motorcycle racing games will steer toward a certain series, while street racing fanatics will pick up another game. This is not the case with Valentino Rossi. This game caters to a wider demographic by having several game modes, with different vehicles for you to try.
Story
The story isn’t about Valentino Rossi, which you’d come to expect from the title, it’s actually all about you, it’s about someone who’ll bear your statistics, up to a point, as unless you are a pro motorcycle racer, you’ll be unaware of just how you ride your bike. Striking those aspects, it’s possible to create and modify your racer to your liking. After doing so, your career can start and you can see how you grow as a racer, and how your statistics change.
Graphics
Valentino Rossi doesn’t exactly blow minds with the graphical capabilities. There’s nothing that really makes it stand out or make it current gen worthy. Looking it up online, to see if the game is available on other platforms that would merit the graphics, it became obvious it’s purely current gen. Nonetheless, the game doesn’t that look bad as the ragdoll physics work decently, the dust swirls beautifully, but somehow it all looks ‘flat’. This all starts on the character creation screen. There’s the point where you pick the face of your racer, and some of them look badly fotoshopped to fit the facial box. It’s laughable really. From there on out things become slightly more polished. A little detail the developers put it is that you can assign a certain riding style to your character and it actually changes just how your character behaves on the bike. If you pick knees to the pavement, he/she really sticks out his/her knees. If you pick old school, it’s different from the balanced mode. It’s the little things that actually stand out.
Sound
Here, Valentino Rossi, the character and the game come together, as the game has voice acting. Pretty decent voice acting, too. The female voice that guides you through the new aspects of your carreer is welcoming, warm and friendly. Valentino Rossi on the other hand is heavily accented. This results in some hilarity. His accent and pronounciation of certain words are rather comical at times. Even so, the thing about the heavy accent, is that it doesn’t feel like they are putting up a performance.
Gameplay
Valentino Rossi is a racing game. It spans the MotoGP universe, and by that, the developers mean, the MotoGP 2015 season, the MotoGP 2016 season, the historical riders of the 4 stroke classes and even the riders of the 125 cc up to the 500 cc. So the content in the game is abundant. This is a great thing, so you really are getting a bang for your buck. What isn’t so great is that all the game is hidden behind menus upon menus upon menus.
This wouldn’t be a problem if everything was presented in a user-friendly way, as right now you really have to know what you are looking for. At one side this means you might stumble into a mode which surprises you and fills you with glee, at the other side it also means that, if you are new to the game you’ll have to spend hours getting accustomed to the menu system, and even then you might still go looking for a mode under a wrong section.
Valentino Rossi is a game that doesn’t beat around the bush, it’ll let you create your character, choose his or her stats, age, riding style and even doll him or her up in a really cool attire, most of which is locked behind the VR point system. Sidenote: VR points are won by completing certain races and the higher you rank, the more points you gain, allowing you to buy different costume parts for you rider.
After this you’ll be plopped upon your bike and be able to start your first race. If you think for a second the game will go: ‘hang on, this gamer doesn’t know what he/she is supposed to do yet, better give him/her a tutorial.’ You are dead wrong. The game does start off in an ‘easy setting’ as ride assist and other difficulty setting are set to the lowest setting, but still if you are new to this kind of game, your hopes of easily snatching victory will come crashing down like your rider.
It’s not a ‘pedal to the metal’ kind of racing game, it’s a ‘know exactly when to brake and when to hit the throttle’ kind of game. It promotes perseverance and track knowledge. It’s not a game you’ll immediately be good at, you’ll have to hone your skills, slowly upping your characters stats by getting better ranks in races. Every completed race will give you experience in your racer’s stats. After a while he/she will level up those stats and they’ll ride differently. After a couple of succesful races, you’ll unlock perks that upgrade the capabilities of your racer even further.
The sense of developing your own racer, completely making him/her your own, makes for a very intense experience. Whether you pick a racing bike or a car to race, you’ll be spending hours upon hours perfecting your times, and gathering knowledge of the tracks. If you fail, you can always enable the rewind function and correct yourself right after the crash.
Should the single player be beneath you, then you can hop online or plop next to a buddy in your living room and see which one of you is the better racer of the two.
Conclusion
Valentino Rossi is a jam packed game. This game will take hours of you away in the blink of an eye, whether it be in customizing your character, or playing the many different modes. The game doesn’t beat around the bush. It doesn’t hand out trophies or give you easy wins. If you are looking for a game that hands out victories for free, without even testing you, then give this game a wide berth, however if you are looking for something to really sink your teeth into, a game that really wants you to up your game for even gaining a single place in the race, then this game will really suit you.
Valentino Rossi: The Game - Review,
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