MotoGP 22 - VIP Multiplier Pack (DLC)

My first thought booting up MotoGP 22 was pure relief: split-screen is here, on PC, and it works. For a series that had been couch-multiplayer-free since MotoGP 17, that alone reshuffled the deck. Two players, one screen, proper MotoGP bikes - the Saturday night crowd will actually want to give this a spin, though fair warning: this is not Mario Kart. Braking way earlier than your instincts scream at you, hitting the apex with the right lean angle, managing tire wear and fuel load - these are the demands of a real motorcycle sim, and the game will absolutely throw you into the gravel until they click. For newcomers, MotoGP 22 made a genuine effort to lower the barrier. The revised Tutorial walks you through electronics, brake temperatures, and tire wear in short, focused sessions, and the new MotoGP Academy drills you on the secrets of each of the 21-plus official circuits. There is also an Adaptive Difficulty System that reads your in-race performance and suggests adjustments on the fly. Turn the assists on and the game becomes manageable for a casual crowd; strip them back out and you are deep in hardcore sim territory, managing the Ride Height Device in real time to compress suspension and boost corner-exit acceleration. The problem is the ideal line assist has a known habit of marking braking points too late, which means newcomers trusting it will consistently overshoot corners and end up off track. Learn not to lean on it, and the muscle memory you build instead is genuinely satisfying. The career mode is where the sim fanatics will camp out. You can join an official team or build your own from Moto3 upward, hiring engineers, a technical director, and additional riders, then spending development points on engine, frame, aerodynamics, and electronics. Progressing from a lithe 250cc Moto3 machine through Moto2 and finally into the premier class feels earned in a way that few licensed racing games manage. The roster is massive: 120-plus official 2022 season riders plus 70-plus historic riders available for custom championships spanning the 500cc, 800cc, 990cc, and MotoE classes. Online runs up to 22 players, though the community noted the multiplayer felt a bit thin on personality at launch. The real headline for 2022 is Nine: Season 2009, a documentary-style mode blending roughly 50 minutes of real archival footage from that famously chaotic MotoGP season with in-game race challenges. You step into the boots of Valentino Rossi, Casey Stoner, Jorge Lorenzo, and Dani Pedrosa, replicating pivotal moments across every round from Losail to Valencia. It plays more like a structured challenge mode than a freeform season replay - pass this rider, hold the gap, make the podium - but the narration from MotoGP documentary filmmaker Mark Neale gives it a texture nothing else in the genre has attempted. It is the single strongest argument for picking up this entry over skipping it. The honest criticism is the one that follows every annual sports sim: if you played MotoGP 21, you are looking at an incremental update. The physics received refinements - better curb behaviour, added tire flex, less rear slide at the limit - but the overall feel is familiar. Some AI pace inconsistency track to track, occasional bugs in the Nine mode at launch, and a visual package that shines on the bikes themselves but looks rougher on trackside assets. Veteran players noted the physics still feel partially scripted in edge cases rather than fully dynamic. None of that stops MotoGP 22 from being the most feature-complete and accessible entry in the series to date. The split-screen is a win for the couch crowd, the Nine mode is a win for anyone who cares about the sport's history, and the MotoGP Academy makes it friendlier for new riders than any previous entry. Just budget time to unlearn everything you know from four-wheeled sims before the real fun starts.

Riley · Scout Team

Sports & racing

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