Superbike 2000

With the official license from the World Superbike series, EA Sports has the chance to bring one of the only sports we Brits are any good at to your PC. Does the game match up to Carl Fogarty's four-times World Championship skills?

EA Sports has taken simulation to a new level with Superbike 2000. As the bikes line up on the grid, the nasal tones of Keith Huewen take me back to sitting in the pub last summer watching Carl Fogarty take on the world's best - and the graphics make the impression still more convincing. Often the camera angles and sense of reality is so strong I'd rather be watching Superbike 2000 than real racing. Motion capture is spot on and the riders all clamber about their machines convincingly. Even the slightly awkward, lumbering run of a man dressed in a full-body leather suit looks just right.

The inevitable downside of this is Superbike requires a ninja PC to look its best. On a PIII-500 and TNT1, it would only settle at 800x600 with the options turned down. A GeForce is really where the action is at, allowing flawless draw distance and consistent frame rate at high resolution, even at crowded moments like the always-hectic first corner.

In the best tradition of racing sims, Superbike allows players to control the level of difficulty by modifying the amount of assistance the computer offers. Automatic gearboxes, steering, braking and accelerating help are on offer, and your rider can be set to lean forward and back to control the bike. Without these options, even moving off in a straight line is a challenge - without proper throttle and weight control, the front wheel will lift and ultimately flip the bike. Rider assistance is a welcome addition - it makes racer-boy automatically try to correct minor wobbles and losses of control. Useful on those gravel-trap diversions.

Aggressive and convincing AI riders provide yet more difficulty. Take a dodgy line around one of them, and he will shake his fist at you as you touch fairings. I remember in my first race, seeing Colin Edwards give it too much, too soon straight in front of me. I was forced to pick the bike up before slamming on the brakes to avoid running wide, laying black marks all over the apex and scattering other competitors in my wake. As I leant back in to the racing line, another rider forced me sideways and the back wheel touched grass. Down I went.

Turning on "real crashes" results in many a humorous moment. If you throw your precious toy down the track - something you will find yourself doing very often on harder levels - the rider will get up, dust himself down, and run back up the track to find his bike. On reaching it, he will pick it up and remount, performing what looks like a bump-start, but strangely the engine noise remains constant throughout. When racer-boy is running alongside the bike, steering away from him results in the bike falling over and flipping him up in the air. How I laughed - until I remembered doing almost the same thing with my first real bike, albeit in less glamorous circumstances, and not in front of so many people.

This option, unfortunately, is less than practical in a full race. As your rider runs back to his bike, another bike will often hit him - resulting not in hideous injury but just being batted down the track. The other riders are not smart enough to stop or avoid fallen riders, so often you'll end up thrown some distance from your original crash and have to run for ages to reach your bike.

Sadly the bikes are all but impossible to high-side, and the tracks are disappointingly smooth - making Donington's twists less arse-clenching than they should be, and so in some places lines are possible that would probably tip you off in reality. And it would be good to see fairings crumple and engine blocks wear through as the bikes slide off the track - although there is damage as an option it is not visualised, and I wish my bike was as resilient as Superbike's.

Sonically, although the two- and four-cylinder bikes sound suitably different, there is something missing from the samples. Twins just don't raise the hairs on the back of the neck like they should, and although pinning the throttle wide makes the fours scream, this area lacks the passion that shows so strongly in the graphics.

Taking on your two-wheeled friends is made socially acceptable with Superbike's multiplayer modes. Intenet, LAN and an all-too-rare split screen two player mode. Bearing in mind the PC needed to see the game at its best, perhaps finding two PCs of suitable specification will prove tricky.

Superbike 2000 takes a different route to games like GP500. There is little effort made here to provide a comprehensive and fully accurate motorcycle simulation - this is arguably impossible, in any case - and Superbike 2000 is more aimed at providing a satisfying playing experience than a training aid for wannabe racers. But, to its credit, Superbike manages to make a good arcade racer, with assistance options on maximum, as well as a semi-realistic simulation. The fantastic graphics - which provide a strong initial appeal - just put the icing on the gameplay cake.

Review By GamesDomain