• Players: 1
  • Platforms: PS4, Xbox One, PC, Switch (Reviewed)
  • Release Date: October 13th, 2016
  • Developer: Artefact Studios
  • Publisher: Microids
  • Rating: Skip It

Moto Racer 4 is the sort of game that is an exercise in frustration. Not because it’s bad all the way around, but because it has a lot of wasted potential and ultimately ends up being the sort of game you hate more than love, even though you might start out with an open heart willing to love it. The game features up to 10 racers, a handful of dirt and asphalt tracks across varied locations, and the ability to upgrade the bikes by completing style challenges and earning tokens.

Content: Poor

The Switch version of the game only has a Career Mode and Quick Play. That’s it. Those are your only two options. The other platforms get a multiplayer mode for up to 10 people, so maybe it has more value there. I bought the game for dirt cheap during a sale, so I didn’t lose much and didn’t expect much, but even for as cheap as the game is it still feels like it gives you less than titles like Super Toy Cars and Space Ribbon.

The Career Mode is broken down into 10 tabs, each with multiple challenges consisting of different tasks, such as Time Trials, Single Races, Hot Laps, or Hunter and Prey Modes. The last two are kind of cool, because in Hunter your objective is to track down a specific rider before the end of a lap, while in Prey the objective is to outrun other riders for a lap (or two).

If you were hoping for a lot of different races, challenges and tracks, they aren’t really present here. There’s maybe a dozen or so tracks in total, rearranged and shuffled around, sometimes played in reverse to get the most out of the game’s limited amount of content. The real big meat of the Career Mode is the Championships at the end of each tab. Once you complete the tasks in a tab the Championship for that tab will open up, and if you’re successful you’ll unlock the next tab in the Career mode, and maybe a new rider.

Certain challenges will also unlock new tricks for the Motocross races, or new T.U.R.B.O., abilities for both the sport bikes and the dirt bikes. You can use the stunts/tricks to earn style points, which in turn – if you meet the style point requirements for a challenge – will unlock upgrade points.

Controls: Fair

The controls for the game are fair. The bikes handle quite well despite the game’s awful framerate at times. You can weave in and out of traffic, and you can pull off wheelies or perform mid-air stunts without much hassle. Stunts are done by moving the left thumbstick in a direction and tapping the ‘X’ button. Depending on the combination done will depend on the trick performed. The more tricks you perform in succession the more style points you earn, which can be multiplied by a factor of up to 10. So it’s not hard to see how you can rack up a ton of points doing a lot of tricks in the Motorcross races.

For the sports bikes, however, you can’t perform mid-air tricks. You do still get points for jumping and landing. Landing with both wheels flat also gives you a slight turbo boost. As you progress in the game you can also take advantage of manual boosts made available after performing certain maneuvers in-game.

For instance, if you catch the slipstream of another rider, you will get a turbo boost. A brief prompt will pop up indicating that if you tab ‘B’ at the right moment, you can activate an extra boost. These extra boost prompts are unlocked throughout the Career Mode for all sorts of tricks and maneuvers, including when you land, when you slipstream, when you perform a wheelie, and when you perform tricks. So you’re incentivized to take advantage of all these boost moments as much as possible.

In some ways it works but in others it doesn’t. Why? Because the boost/turbo button also shares with the wheelie button, which also shares with the bump/elbow button. So sometimes if you’re slipstreaming behind someone the ‘B’ prompt will appear just as you’re about to perform a wheelie, which in turn will either cancel the wheelie boost or cancel the slipstream boost, or in a worst case scenario, cancel both. There’s also the issue where you’re attempting to elbow someone and then the boost prompt appears, so you miss out on boosting because you’re in the middle of trying to elbow someone out of the way.

It would have made more sense if one of the bumpers was to elbow people, another bumper was to perform a wheelie, and ‘B’ was dedicated to boost events. This way you’re not spamming the ‘B’ button for every single maneuver. Not only will it wear your ‘B’ button down quickly, but it also makes for awful gameplay synchronicity.

Gameplay: Horrible Boost-Spam

The game starts fine. The early Career Mode tabs are great at easing new players into the fold, explaining how the turbo function works, giving you some breathing room to perform tricks, and racking up wins with ease. That all makes sense. As you progress, though, you begin to realize that the game’s balance isn’t quite right.

While the bikes handle well enough and there’s a good sense of speed, the later portions of the Career Mode are an absolute wretched chore to get through.

The difficulty ramps up in asinine ways. You don’t get to choose the difficulty, the game just decides to get more difficult. And I don’t mean the tracks requiring better precision with turning and more precise braking – those requirements do come into play, but more-so the game becomes entirely, 100% reliant on turbo-spam.

Now most people know that arcade games are reliant on boosting in some way: Turbo pads on the ground, drift-boosts, trick boosts, draft boosts, etc. We’re used to that in arcade games. It makes sense. Here, however, someone decided that instead of becoming better at learning the tracks, maximizing braking, and acing the turns, the core of the last three or four career tabs would be focused on challenges that require nothing more than boost-spamming.

I don’t mean boost-spamming like in Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed or Mario Kart 8, where you’re constantly drifting to build boost and looking for the turbo pads at every inch of the race, which creates intensity and requires skill. No, the boost-spamming in Moto Racer 4 is a whole other beast.

Instead, the game wants you to spam your wheelies at all times of the race if you aren’t slip-streaming. It becomes mostly annoying for the sports bikes more-so than for the Motocross races because with the Motorcross you can perform stunts in the air to earn boost, and there are incessant jumps throughout the race to maintain boost. With the sports bikes the only way to maintain boost is either by slipstreams or wheelies, and it’s next to nigh impossible to catch a slipstream during turns.

So how do you boost during turns if you can’t catch someone’s slipstream? Well, you have to do wheelies… during turns.

Yes, this game forces players to do wheelies all the time at every moment possible in the later Career Mode stages. Since the turbo can only be activated once the meter cooldown has completed, it means you have to keep timing and waiting to spam your wheelies so you can boost again.

Now like most motorcycle racing games, performing wheelies in Moto Racer 4 results in a loss of traction and steering stability. Also, combine this with the fact that the game’s tracks are all twisty and turny and full of chicanes and hairpin turns. So you basically have to boost-spam on curvy tracks, using wheelies that force you to lose stability. But wait, it gets worse!

Every time you boost and make micro-adjustments during the boost, such as turning, you lose speed. You lose speed if you bump into anyone, you lose speed if you go off the track, and you lose speed if you bump into or even graze an object.

Essentially the game wants you to perform perfect boosts, using wheelies, during hairpin turns, without touching anything or turning. Seriously?!

It’s broken game logic that doesn’t make sense.

It’s one thing if the game is hard because it requires skills, it’s another thing if it’s hard because it wants you to perform seemingly impossible feats. The bikes may have arcade handling, but not so arcadey-enough where you can perform wheelies and boost through hairpin turns. Either you lose speed or you have to slow down to actually brake.

However, if you slow down to brake then the AI opponents will just boost through the turn you refused to boost through, and they will get a substantial lead on you. And yes, basically you have to boost-spam to keep up with the AI, who – in the later levels – will boost-spam incessantly. It’s the only way to win. Boost-spam.

Are you tired of boost-spam yet? Good, because I certainly am.

Graphics: Ruined By Bad Framerate

Graphically the game doesn’t look too bad on the Switch, but the visual fidelity isn’t the problem, the framerate is. The game is supposed to be running at about 30 frames per second, but good luck maintaining that. Some tracks you may reach those 30fps but most won’t.

In fact, the Motocross tracks are notorious for dipping as low as 15fps. In turn, this affects input lag, and in turn, this makes racing that much harder because micro-adjustments can’t be made when necessary, and you’re just a victim to the circumstances of the software’s performance (or lack thereof).

A lot more optimization should have been done for this Unreal Engine 4-powered racing title, because trying to make micro-second movements while the framerate lags or the frames drop, is just inexcusably disruptive.

The actual models, textures, and some of the stage designs actually aren’t bad, but it’s hard to appreciate them when you’re fighting against the game’s poor graphics optimization, and the abysmal framerate. Combine that with the AI’s boost-spamming and the fact that if the bikes touch you can’t turn, and you have a recipe for disaster.

Oh, did I forget to mention? Yeah, if the bikes touch in any way they briefly lose the ability to turn.

It makes zero sense at all. Bump someone from behind? Neither of you can turn. Get bumped from behind? Neither of you can turn. Shunt someone from the side or get shunted? Neither of you can turn.

Why? Who knows.

The game has a lot of these kind of quirks that just don’t make any sense at all, especially since they added the ability to elbow/bump people using your bike. What’s the point when you lose the ability to turn? It just doesn’t make any sense. It becomes even more frustrating when you combine it with the AI boost-spam, the bad framerate, and the already shoddy implementation of forcing players to boost-spam through sharp turns. It almost makes you want to throw the controller (or the Switch) at the wall.

How The Game Could Have Been Fixed

Some people might be convinced this game only requires skills of those willing to “get gud!” but this isn’t one of those games. This isn’t Gran Turismo or Forza Motorsport, where you need to line up the turn and maximize your braking efficiency to scoot between the leader before the apex. This isn’t Ride 3, where you go wide on the crescent with minimal braking but avoid understeer by utilizing just enough oversteer so that you can hit the accelerator and gain speed over the opponents coming out of the turn. No, those tactics don’t apply here.

In the later portions of Moto Racer 4, if you try to race like the game has real-world physics you’ll lose.

This isn’t like the classic Moto Racer from back in 1997. This isn’t reliant on mastering turns and understanding the speed/braking ratios to maintain the pole position. This is all about boost-spam!

If the game was going to go heavy on spamming your turbo in the latter half of the Career Mode they should have done it right, like Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed or Mario Kart Wii, 7, or 8. In those games you have multiple ways to boost. In Mario Kart Wii they balanced it so that motorcycles could boost from wheelies, but obviously you couldn’t use it in turns, which is where the karts had the advantage of drift-boosting. Racing Transformed had a similar setup with turbo pads, boost rings, and drift-boosts, in addition to power-ups. Essentially there was always some way to stay with the pack leaders without being left behind due to shoddy mechanics.

Moto Racer 4 doesn’t have that.

If you aren’t spamming wheelies then you aren’t boosting, and if you aren’t boosting, then you’re left behind.

An easy fix would have been to make drift-boosting available for the sports bikes. This way you don’t have to try to wheelie your way through turns (which makes no sense whatsoever). Drift through the turns, boost, and then wheelie. This way you could alternate between the two and actually utilize skill on the tracks instead of trying to wheelie your way through chicanes and hairpins.

But anyway, Moto Racer 4 is a huge step back even from the original 1997 outing. And it certainly doesn’t compare to Moto Racer 2, which had 4-player split-screen and a nice selection of both dirt and asphalt tracks. By all means, just skip Moto Racer 4 altogether. If you really want a fast-paced motorcycle racing game with evenly balanced tracks, a competitive and challenging AI, and some fun racing mechanics, try Speed Kings, it’s a far superior game. Unfortunately, it’s not available for the Nintendo Switch, so you’re kind of fresh out of luck when it comes to competent motorcycle racing titles for Nintendo’s device.