MotoGP 25 review: arcade thrills, but a hardcore sim stills lurks underneath

When your car leaves the track because you got too ambitious on the brakes, you wince a bit, worry about your underfloor and try to get some temp back in the tyres as you return to the track. When it happens on a 1000cc MotoGP prototype, it’s time to pick a religion and pray.

That fundamental fragility, the ‘win it or bin it’ stakes of bike racing, has always been the heart of the appeal of its game adaptations, and lately Milestone’s licensed MotoGP releases have, if you’ll excuse the excellent pun, really leaned into that. Lately the bike physics became so detailed and demanding that braking for each new corner felt like opening a door in Resident Evil.

That’s great for those who can invest the (many, many) hours required to master the handling, but the particularly stern challenges of MotoGP 23 and 24 left those seeking a more accessible thrill either in the gravel trap or the assists menu. So when we say the standout feature of MotoGP 25 is its arcade handling mode, we’re not damning it with faint praise. In short, that handling option rediscovers a freewheeling, carefree style of play that just about any racing fan would get a kick out of.

The hardcore sim handling is still there, lurking underneath, ready to highside you out of your gaming chair. But the addition of this new, breezier riding style means a) hardcore racers can invite their less experienced mates in and race together on an even playing field, and b) anyone alienated by the series’ recent direction can get stuck back in.

That means both parties can enjoy what’s a typically comprehensive offering. Aside from some sharp visuals provided by Unreal Engine 5 and all-new sounds captured on-track from the real bikes, the full 22-track roster is present in impressive detail, including Hungary’s new Balaton Park circuit. All the riders and teams from the MotoGP, Moto2 and Moto3 categories are present, as you’d expect.

Online racing, time trials, a MotoGP Academy tutorial mode, and an engrossing career mode that now includes training activities – they’re all here too. Between race weekends you might be invited out to do some flat track racing with Fabio Quartararo, minibikes with Marc Marquez, or motard with Maverick Vinales. Doing so improves your relationship with the rider who invited you, which could make signing for their team easier.

Trouble is, this has been a pretty comprehensive experience for a few years now. The bikes and tracks are table stakes for an annualised licensed racer, and although there’s a unique joy in working your way up all the way from Moto3 in this series that even the mighty Codemasters F1 series doesn’t have a like-for-like answer to, every new release from Milestone has a lot of franchise fatigue to offset.

So, the question is: do those big new additions – those career mode training events and the arcade physics option – do enough? That’s a tricky one. 

Because there’s clearly been a lot of love poured into the three new disciplines that you ride at training events, and across four new locations, by the way. The animations look spot on, and the feel is convincing. But in the context of where and why they appear in your career mode schedule, they’re a means to an end. The focus is always on mastering a MotoGP bike, so there’s not much incentive to spend more time figuring out the nuances of a minibike than you really need to.

The other significant addition is a change to the way you develop your bike, setting the direction more specifically via talks with your race engineer, and setting longer term intentions that allow the game to reflect your multi-season rebuild project at the likes of Yamaha or Honda. It works well. But it’s not going to convince anyone to buy a new full-price game.

And yet here we are, watching ourselves get sucked into another many-hour career mode save all over again. Not because this year feels strikingly different, but because the gradual evolution of all its parts is still compelling.

The rider market, in which racers from all categories change contracts and swap rides from season to season, mirrors the real sport well and makes it exciting to turn up to each opening round facing new rivals. Developing the bike gives you some long-term goals. Mastering the feeling is still as compelling as ever, in either arcade or sim mode.

So MotoGP 25 gets a pass, but a cautious one. It feels like the ever-escalating demands of game development are making it harder and harder for annualised release series to keep making meaningful progress. It feels like worryingly long ago that Milestone gave us that brilliant ‘Nine’ playable documentary mode, complete with historic bikes and riders from the 2009 season, bespoke physics, and a beautiful bit of narration that re-tells the legendary ‘09 season as a series of playable scenarios. In fact, it was only four games ago.

But judging by the slowing pace of change in MotoGP 25, we might be waiting quite some time until we see a similar step forwards again.