	SBK X (Superbike World Championship)
	Developer: Milestone Publisher: Black Bean Games Release Date: Out Now Players: 1, 2-16 online	Words By:
I think Milestone are probably the only people making racing games for consoles that are truly set at the sim end of the market right now, so I was really looking forward to some proper hardcore racing. And I mean the sort of racing that requires more of my skill and concentration (like Milestone’s Superstars V8 games), and less of my patience and sheer ability to stay awake than the tedious and repetitive Forza 3 demanded. The good news is that whether you play it in Arcade mode or Simulation, this year’s SBK actually allows the bike to go all "squirrely" on a regular basis without always dumping you off, and you can go into a corner too deep, front and rear brakes hard on and drift sideways like you see the real SBK riders do. Yay! SBK X features three different classes of bikes; WSS (World SuperSport), STK (Superstock) and of course SBK (Superbikes). The circuits are a varied bunch, all of the venues of the real championship are included (Valencia, Assen, Monza, Misano Adriatico, Donington, Brno, Nurburgring, Imola, Magny-Cours, Portimáo, Phillip Island, Losai, Kyalami and Salt Lake City,) but aficionados will notice that the races are run in a different order and that the new Silverstone layout is missing, and we get good old Donington instead. I guess this is forgivable due to the strictures of development time and the late addition of the new track. There are 6 Brits in the championship this year and that should mean some added appeal for UK gamers, and certainly makes it easier to relate to than Moto GP. As with most racing games these days the machines, the bikes, look great – Milestone’s latest version of the tried and tested game engine is no great improvement on last year’s and is slightly less pleasing to the eye than Forza 3 as far as detail goes, but nicer than this year’s blur-fest Moto GP game and without the frame rate jitters that both these games throw at you from time to time. The game stays smooth even with all the other bikes in front of you, and this is accomplished with a game engine that draws all the detail you need, but wastes no processing power on flourishes and unnecessary levels of detail. Therefore you get highly detailed bikes and riders, but rather sparse trackside detail and things like identical spectators, low res backdrops and paper-thin Armco barriers. In simulation mode (there are three levels of “sim”) the bikes certainly feel more "bikey" than the last SBK I played (and Moto GP for that matter), and the days of playing bike games that had you driving something that felt like a car that leaned round corners are finally in the past. What I mean is that you get all the slithering under heavy braking and tail-wobbling under hard acceleration that real bikes exhibit, and it makes every lap exciting and believable. The rider’s weight can be shifted and adds to the realism, but for some unknown reason this is set to the right stick by default, so quite how you’re supposed to shift your weight whilst steering and applying the front (Left trigger) and rear brakes (‘A’ button), not to mention manual gear shifting is a mystery to me. Thankfully you can customise the controls and set both steering and weight shifting to the left stick as it should be, or even turn it off if you’re so inclined. In addition to SBK X’s extensive simulation side there’s a new Arcade mode that is a heck of a lot more than just simplified handling and better brakes. The Arcade handling makes racing literally a different game as it allows cornering speeds, acceleration and braking distances that are impossible in sim mode, whilst making it difficult (but not impossible) to crash or fall off. Another major change is that the rear brake is no more and pressing ‘A’ becomes your boost button, vital on the straights for obtaining top speed. You can enter Quick Races or Championships, and there’s a Time Attack mode and a new Story Mode. This gives the game a whole different complexion. The Story mode is an addictive set of scenarios that set you challenges like getting to a certain placing at the finish, or beat a certain rider, and to stop you from getting too comfortable occasionally may add simulation-like problems like fading brakes or wearing tyres. These challenges may be less than a lap or 4 laps in length, in varied weather. This type of scenario play has been seen several times before but it adds some depth to the arcade mode and it’s a nice departure from the strictures of a sim career or season. The AI opposition riders are still a bit too much like sheep but they do follow different lines, pass each other and sometimes behave realistically as they even make the occasional mistake and end up on their bottoms looking surprised. They look over their shoulders and pull aside to let you by if you've lapped them and your rider will gesticulate if you make contact with another bike. The crashes and rider animations are a bit basic and mechanical looking, but just like real riders, if you do come off, all you want to do is get back on ASAP so I guess elaborate and lengthy crash animations are a bit of a no-no. As tidy as the handling is in SBK X I still think it's far too hard to get a bike round a track without going off, I find I can do lap after lap in a car racer within 100ths of a second of each other, but in SBK X if I do 3 laps and they're within a second of each other and I've only left the tarmac 3 times I'm happy. The game requires a lot of concentration, and cornering demands you set up way before the corner as the bikes don't really react quickly enough to correct alignment errors. Getting the bikes from full lean in one direction to the other still takes too long, and holding a smooth arc through a curve is still harder than it is on a real bike, so I’d like to see this improved further. What the handling requires is more responsiveness with less twitchiness. Bike riders will know that bikes tend to hold their own arc in a corner with very little work from the rider and SBK X doesn’t quite simulate the balancing act that bike racers perform between centrifugal force, grip and gravity as well as it could. A detailed race programme allows you to have all the practice, qualifying and warm up sessions (including the 3-session ‘Superpole’ in the SBK class that F1’s qualifying sessions were based on) that the real series do, and throughout the various sessions your team will ask you to perform “tests” (although these are never specified so you just have to stay out lapping the track in the session concerned until the ‘test bar’ fills up) that if completed will get the team’s bike newly developed parts and improve its performance. One nice new touch in the sim mode is that although you can go fiddle with suspension and rebound settings, adjust the gear ratios and twiddle rake angles till the cows come home, when in the pits you can (via a multiple choice text box) tell your engineer what you don’t like about your bike’s handling and what you want it to do, and he’ll (as long as there’s enough time left in the session) just go tweak the bike to handle differently – “yeah right, this’ll make a difference” I thought, but changes really do seem to work. You can check the session times and skip time forward so you can make a session as long or as short as you like. No one is going to criticise SBK X for its lack of options regarding race length, difficulty or level or simulation, that’s for sure. A basic rider edit function means you can enter your own name (although this seems to appear reversed for some reason) and ride as you rather than as one of the real stars, and although the customisation features don’t rival an EA game you can give yourself a nickname which will be clearly displayed on your rider’s butt and choose from a selection of unlockable helmet styles. Win a race and you’ll get a brief podium sequence complete with your chosen national anthem, but don’t expect to be able to spray champagne all over the sexy promo girls. > SBK X isn’t all good news and has some sloppy presentation due to what is either poor English translation or the odd typo, and some of the loading routines will get on your wick as the game appears to go to a loading screen… only to return you back to where you were in the first place. Being able to select exactly how long you want races to be and having an almost baffling number of other options is good in some respects, but it can also mean a lot of fiddling to get the game set up how you want with a suitable difficulty level and race length and to be honest, I’d rather the game decided most of these sub-options for me, and have more limited choices—in the games industry we keep hearing about new games having a routine that scans the player’s ability and adjusts to it to give the player a constant challenge whilst still giving them the ability to win, and it’s about time all games did this without the need for all this option twiddling. Also while I’m having a moan I’d love to tell you that SBK X’s online racing is amazing but a general lack of opponents means my experiences were lacking and often only one-on-one. The options allow for all classes from the solo game, all the teams and circuits, sim or arcade, collisions on or off etc. But unsporting non-racers who get left behind and then quit are still not punished by recording drop-outs on their stats so just winning a race isn’t easy. It doesn’t look like SBK X is going to rival Moto GP (or indeed its popular stablemate Superstars V8 Racing) as an online racer if that’s your bag. A definite improvement for the series SBK X supplies a good deal of varied racing but doesn’t exactly rewrite the motorcycle racing game handbook. Having said that, the feel of the simulation side of the game is good, and it caters for casual racers as well with a well-padded arcade mode. Whether you’re looking for a sim or an arcade racer I found it a lot more playable than the recent Moto GP game, and if you’re fed up with 4-wheeled racers then look no further…

Best Bits
- Feels more like racing a bike than before.
- 14 circuits & 3 classes.
- Fully flexible Sim & Arcade modes.

Worst Bits
- As a full sim it requires huge amount of concentration to keep a bike upright and on the grey bit.
- Online racing still seems hit & miss.
- The replay mode needs a rewind option.


by: Masonic Dragicoot