When heads of state dig their heels in and disagree, regardless of their professionalism, they fall out. It might have been no bigger a deal than passing a bill that allowed OAPs to claim free denture cream, but highly opinionated people with power falling out is a big deal. It’s how civil war starts – the War of the Roses and the American Civil War were essentially about lines and boundaries, when they all wanted the same thing in reality anyway. Relationships torn, lines were drawn, tempers flared, teeth bared, war declared… and it got really bloody and messy from there on.

So it is on X360: right now the team is divided, and apart from some furious tapping on keyboards, there’s a rather heavy silence in our magazine pod. The time for talk is over – there’s been much brow beating and glaring going on and the tension is verging on breaking point. All this over a single 360 title, MotoGP 07, which has quickly earned the title of the most contentious Marmite games in the history of X360 magazine…

Between ’06 and 07, the MotoGP licence has changed hands several times in several regions from publisher to publisher, and it’s not entirely surprising. Despite its popularity, the series is still a niche game, catering for hardcore motorcycle racing fans, a series that could conceivably fall out of fashion at any time and therefore has a greater risk attached to it than your typical licence. THQ has swept up the rights to publish MotoGP 07 in the UK, which looks like a savvy move, as it’s a far more fleshed-out and satisfying experience than its predecessor.

Key to the series has always been hardcore accessibility, with the focus being on the purity of driving a bike rather being distracted by a myriad variety of modes, menus and additional features. It’s an intense game that requires a high degree of concentration, much like the real-life competition. We found ourselves forced to focus almost exclusively on the road, with precious little time to glance upwards at our speedometer, or the layout of the track itself, so it’s just as well there’s little in the way of ingame distractions.

That doesn’t mean that MotoGP is turning vanilla on us; there are still the challenges, unlockables, rewards, Career and Championship modes and four tiers of difficulty with which to play with. It does mean that MotoGP’s driving experience is much bigger than all of this, though, and the ratio of time spent tweaking settings is dwarfed by the time spent actually playing the game. Always the preferable way round in any game, but particularly noteworthy in this one. That much has remained the same for 07 – what has changed is most definitely for the better.

Problems arose for some of us in the last game right from the start, however. It was too damn hard. If MotoGP ’06 was a martial arts instructor, it would be the hot-tempered and impatient John Kreese of the Cobra Kai Dojo, expecting its students to toe the line every step of the way and pumelling them for the slightest faltering step. It was notoriously unforgiving, demanding you button every U-turn or you could kiss goodbye to your purchase on the handlebars, slipping from your maintained pole position to the back of the pack with barely any hope of catching it again. The other major bugbear everyone had was with the AI, which had a tendency to bunch unrealistically before the first turn at the start of each race, making that crucial bend a test of who can stay on their bike the longest. AI riders would drive in a uniform manner too, with no distinctive daring or cautious character to any particular one.

Climax has taken these issues on board and has effectively dealt with them for 07. AI has been tweaked to kill these two pigeons with a single stone and your opponents display far more personality than before. It means that the pack spreads from the green light with the Valentino Rossis initially playing it cool and stretching out towards the back, while those of Casey Stoner’s temperament tear hard into the corner. Collisions are as inevitable as they ever were in specific situations, as no one’s willing to budge an inch when there’s a race at stake, but it seems as if the collision problems themselves have been ironed out as well. There’s no longer a bias towards your AI opponent and, should chrome and rubber mesh at any point, your opponent is as likely to suffer a humiliating and intimate introduction with the tarmac as you are. This doesn’t happen as often anyway, because the physics have been dumbed down in this department to 07’s benefit, and bikes tend to bounce off each other with smaller knocks, even at high speed, rather than sending their drivers careering off course. A boon to the overall gameplay, as there’s only so much realism a game can handle before it’s made unplayable.

The biggest improvement we’ve seen to this series is its overall accessibility, and before hardcore MotoGP fans start to bemoan the adultery of their favourite series, there’s still no less skill and devotion of time required to play 07 effectively than the last. The skill gradient between each difficulty setting just seems to have steepened a little so that the Rookie level is quite attainable for any newbie who wants to practise, yet progress somewhat through the game and improve their seed. Our first proper attempt at the first track in Rookie mode resulted in a heartening third place, a position we would tear our hair out and beat the walls until our knuckles bled to obtain in the last game. And it got better than that still, as we consistently won a podium place over the 20 races we had to complete to finish the season, resulting in our racer ‘Biggles’ being at the top of the table by no mere margin by the end. All of this, despite us not even bothering to play the preceding qualifier, putting us right at the back for the beginning of each race.

Sounds too easy? Well moving onto the next difficulty setting soon put our hell-for-leather approach to cornering into perspective. The Pro tier is hard, no serious challenge for a seasoned MotoGP rider but a tough ride for Rookie-status players. And there are another two levels still above this, culminating in the unlockable Legend, a mode you should only think about attempting if your skill level is on a par with real-life Rossi’s riding skill, or you’re so bad that you’ve no MotoGP spirit left to be broken. For those MotoGP virgins looking for an analogy, it’s like a hopelessly lame Guitar Hero fan who can’t cope with using four frets, checking out how hard Guitar Hero II can really get by trying to play Jericho on Expert. If you’re making decent progress, then trying to fly before you ride is only going to discourage you.

The MotoGP series has now become a case of polishing, making small, but key changes in gameplay dynamics, updating graphics, features and statistics and adding whatever appropriate technological advances there are at the time. For the casual observer and the non-fan, it’s not going to look like there’s a great difference from one game to the next, though. And that’s the main trouble with MotoGP 07 and the reason for the current tense clime on X360: the problem is that there’s no problem with it. Basically, if you’re not getting on with MotoGP 07, it’s not the game that’s at fault, it’s you that’s the problem.

It’s purely a matter of personality and taste, which is applicable to any game, of course, but MotoGP stands conspicuously apart from its genre in cleaving a polar divide in the gaming community, with a minority – but nevertheless substantial – number of gamers living and breathing MotoGP, hence the niche status. If you’re into hammering it round a bend at breakneck speed, picking up all manner of power-ups and burning asphalt at every opportunity; if you’re the kind of gamer who gravitates solely toward arcade-y racers like OutRun, Need For Speed or FlatOut, then we’d put six inches of Yen on it that you won’t find much pleasure in MotoGP 07, it just doesn’t gratify that quickly.

However, if slow-burning titles appeal to you, those that demand far more attention and dedication than the typical five-minute hook other games offer, requiring a serious degree of skill to master yet will yield an intense and thrilling gaming experience once you’ve got the feel for it, then MotoGP 07 will definitely be worth a shot. Of course, we’re preaching to the choir if you’re already a fan…

Ben Biggs