Superbike games are a lot like reality TV series ‘Idols’: every year the line-up changes, and there’s always a few tweaks to jazz things up, but ultimately it’s just more of the same thing with a few cosmetic changes to create the illusion of freshness. Coincidentally, it’s also one of those things you either fanatically adore or just downright hate.<\/p>\n
SBK X (aka SBK 10) blends two distinctive types of racing to try to cater for fans and haters alike: a hardcore Simulation mode with unforgiving physics and impressive realism, and an Arcade mode with wheelies, gravity-defying turns, and a rider practically welded to the bike. While Arcade mode should be an introduction into racing for noobs or those testing the SBK waters, the problem is that the only people who are really interested in these games are the die-hard bike game fans, and playing arcade style when there’s a uber-realistic simulation available is like asking Eddie Van Halen to play Guitar Hero.<\/p>\n
Dedicated SBK followers and gamers do have a fair amount of gameplay options to choose from though, with Arcade choices including the traditional Time Attack and Quick Race, a Story Mode where bikers will progress through the Superstock1000 series (i.e. bikes with lawnmower engines) all the way to the Superbikes, and a Quick Championship where all the worldwide tracks are, uh, cycled through. Most of the modes can be enjoyed by up to 16 players in the Multiplayer mode too, which also features personalized teams with your friends and an extensive leaderboard.<\/p>\n
Simulation mode gets unsurprisingly more in-depth with other race options in addition to Arcade mode’s offering. Race Weekend is a two-day series of qualifiers, warm-ups, practices and races, and Championship strings together a series of race weekends over every track. The meat and potatoes of Simulation mode though is the Career, which follows your biker over a period of eight years\/seasons from a lowly Superstock1000 newbling all the way to a Superbike superstar. Customizable riders and vastly differing teams will affect the journey through every race, and a host of bike tweakage and fiddling is available for hours of fine tuning over the career’s lengthy duration.<\/p>\n
Unfortunately, despite featuring a host of play options and hefty amount of technical stuff for veteran bikers to muck about with, the overall gameplay experience in SBK X is just not particularly enthralling. The visuals are quite stark and unappealing, with many tracks feeling empty and almost ‘unfinished’. Some of the bike detail is amazing, especially close-up, and it seems like a lot of love has gone into getting everything technically correct, but there’s absolutely nothing about the experience that draws you in or makes it feel like you’re actually whizzing down a real track at death-defying speeds. Even the clunky menu system feels like an unwelcome blast from the past.<\/p>\n
On the upside the soundtrack is surprisingly good, but this all depends if your personal taste is skewed towards indie rock like Biffy Clyro or alt rock fist-pumpers like We Are The Arsenal. Bike sounds are suitably growly and immersive, but fall flat when combined with the rather lacklustre racing mechanics.<\/p>\n
Overall, SBK X feels aptly like the old cliché, ‘just like riding a bike’: it just can’t seem to forget it’s same lagging formula when it should be looking for new ways to make the gameplay exciting and contemporary. While it may be the most technically up-to-date and involved title for extremely devout SBK followers, the average gamer will find the bulk of the experience in serious need of a pit stop.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
More of the same means Black Bean\u2019s latest is just like \u2018riding a bike\u2019<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":161,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_sma_x_autopost_status":"idle","_sma_x_autopost_error":"","_sma_x_post_id":"","_sma_facebook_post_id":"","_sma_instagram_post_id":"","_sma_x_attempts":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6519","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6519","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/161"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6519"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6519\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6519"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6519"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6519"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}