MXGP3: The Official Motocross Videogame

I'll be straight with you: if you came here hoping MXGP3 is the motocross answer to Forza or DIRT, you are going to leave disappointed. What it actually is, is the most authentic digital version of the FIM World Motocross Championship available on PC, built on Unreal Engine 4, covering the full 2016 MXGP and MX2 seasons with all the real riders, real bikes, and real tracks. For the niche of players who genuinely care about that license, this is essentially the only game in town, and it fills that gap with more seriousness than flair. The physics are the centrepiece. Successive laps dig furrows into the track surface, so your racing line on lap three genuinely looks and feels different from lap one. Dynamic weather shifts mid-race, meaning you can start under dry conditions and finish fighting through mud that slows your cornering and punishes sloppy landings. Adjustable bike physics settings give newer players some breathing room, but even on forgiving settings this never softens into an arcade racer. You use separate front and rear brake inputs, manage your rider's body weight through corners, and work through both 4-stroke and 2-stroke machinery, including ten 2-stroke bikes added for the first time in the series. Bike customisation runs deep: over 300 official components from real manufacturers let you tune suspension, tyres, exhausts, and liveries, which will keep the gear-head crowd happily busy between race weekends. The career mode sends you up through the MX2 class before tackling the MXGP championship across 18 official tracks, with around 36 races in a full run. There is also a Motocross of Nations mode where you race as part of a national team, a Time Attack for clean solo laps, and a Custom Championship if you want to pick your own race calendar. The structure is solid enough. The problem is everything around it. Menus are dry and impersonal, the feedback on career progress feels thin, and the online multiplayer is unreliable with small player counts even at launch. There is no split-screen, so the whole thing is a solo or online-only affair. If you were imagining Saturday night couch racing, look elsewhere. Collision physics are inconsistently frustrating: a gentle brush against a rival can send you airborne, while a genuinely ugly landing on the front wheel sometimes results in nothing. Jumps feel floaty, landings lack the weight you want from a high-speed motocross sim, and the graphics, despite the engine upgrade, underwhelm compared to contemporaries. Frame rate dips appear on some rigs, and loading times can test your patience before you even reach the gate drop. Steam players still rate it Very Positive at 85 percent after over a thousand reviews, which tells you the core audience has made their peace with these rough edges, or never expected console-level polish in the first place. For the motocross fan who wants to race Cairoli's track at Mantova with the correct bike setup in wet conditions, MXGP3 delivers in a way nothing else on PC does right now. For the casual player or the friend group looking for rowdy couch multiplayer, this one will frustrate more than it entertains. Know which camp you are in before you hit that buy button.

Riley · Scout Team

Sports & racing

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