Superbike 2001 Review

As stupid as it may sound, but "It's in the Game" became my favorite sentence over these couple of years because it was always followed by a good game. EA Sports is one of the trustworthiest companies as their games rule the sports/racing genres for years. Those people had the skill to bring us great 3D engines back in the days we still had our 486s, and kept improving them as the technology advanced, which was obviously enough to remain at the very top of the gaming market.

Not even I am sure if I should criticize or praise them for it, but it is evident that each new edition of their sports serials brought minimal changes. It seems as though they spent all that time designing new menu outlook, shooting cut-scenes, some minor tweaking and considering what unimportant novelties to introduce in order to make the customers buy the new edition. Those novelties mostly came down to updated info on sportsmen/vehicles/championships, and rarely some new options.

The new Superbike 2001 fully sticks to this cliché. This game appeared in stores seven months after its predecessor. I can not say why the programmers had to rush this much, still, as we never published the Superbike 2000 review at ActionTrip (Yup, we were lazy bastards) this review won't deal only with novelties, otherwise it would be one of the shortest reviews ever...

The "novelties" in this game took the shape of the newly introduced training mode. I always best enjoyed learning to drive while chasing other drivers and watching what they are doing, but I did find this option very useful because it will help you learn all the tricks needed to win each track. As the camera approaches each bend, the announcer gives you hints on how to properly pass it, giving you optimal speeds and routes...

Thanks to its several levels of difficulty, Superbike 2001 is an acceptable solution for a variety of players because the levels have been properly balanced. If they reduced the difficulty to minimum by turning on all sorts of in-game aids like the yellow line signifying ideal racing line, accelerator help and extra brake power, even the clumsiest players would have to admit the game was playable. The bikes act totally realistic and all through the game I had the feeling I was controlling the1000cc behemoths. If you're not ready to try out a verisimilar motorbike simulation, or if you do not have a quality game controller, I would never recommend you to choose the Real mode. I was quite successful against the CPU controlled opponents on the Pro mode, but once I shifted one step higher to Real... let's just say I'd rather forget the day. My problem was that I dared tread the asphalt using the keyboard. I didn't manage to pass a single bend. I was dazzled... Hey, I did keep beating those computer players in the Pro mode, didn't I? I got that irritated that I went back to the Pro level after a couple of unsuccessful attempts. As I was frustrated I started losing there too, so I went all the way down to the amateur level. Not even that helped. I just couldn't pull myself together. I got that scared of those bends that I made more and more mistakes. My only option was to leave the game for tomorrow. There you have it - never try to play the Real mode without a very good joystick (and don't think that setting keyboard sensitivity will help, it has absolutely no effect). Partial release of the acceleration or steering key when the bike enters the bend can only have bad effects like sliding on track. And if you do keep them pressed all the time, the engine has a good chance to break. I simply had no solutions to this problem. The entire race simply turns into a competition against yourself. And if anyone succeeds playing this game on the Real level using only keyboard, he (or indeed she) will get an exclusive reward from ActionTrip (like getting to meet our fellow editor Bunny)... Well, at least I saw a bunch of well motion-captured falling sequences...