MXGP 26 - The Official Game Review Summary

Highly enjoyable with satisfying physics, great bike handling, praised visuals, and impressive ruts and track deformation, though cornering can feel heavy and sluggish.

Overall Game Enjoyment: Many players express overall love for the game, appreciating the gameplay and finding it fun and enjoyable, with some calling it fantastic and a step in the right direction.

Ruts and Track Deformation: The ruts and track deformation are major highlights, with players calling them amazing, challenging in a good way, and realistic. The dynamic track conditions add to the immersion and satisfaction.

Physics Realism and Satisfaction: The physics engine is praised for its realism and as a great baseline, providing a satisfying experience, especially with 4-stroke bikes and ground physics. Rider physics and air physics are also enjoyed.

Bike Handling Feels Great: Players consistently praise the bike handling, with many noting that bikes feel good to ride and that handling is satisfying, especially when assists are turned off. The steering and cornering are also highlighted as top-notch.

Visuals and Graphics Praised: The graphics and textures are frequently described as beautiful and visually impressive, with specific mentions of track visuals and overall aesthetic quality. Performance on high-end hardware is also noted as running fine.

Heavy, sluggish cornering: Players complain that the bike feels extremely heavy and unresponsive in tight corners, making turning difficult and exhausting. Cornering is described as awful and sluggish, often sending riders off the track.

Unrealistic air physics: The airborne physics feel weightless and nonsensical, with the bike spinning arbitrarily and feeling like it weighs nothing. Players note that jumps make the bike feel oddly light, and whips behave bizarrely.

Suspension and ground physics issues: Ground physics are problematic: suspension adjustments have no effect, ruts and berms randomly eject the bike, and random bouncing occurs while riding. Players report that the bike can crash out and bounce into the air for no reason.

Multiplayer performance and stability: Multiplayer suffers from laggy connections, absurd input lag, frequent disconnections, and host quitting that ruins races. Additionally, wrecked bikes launch across the track and cause unavoidable collisions.

Frequent crashes and technical issues: The game crashes during play, when opening settings, tabbing out, or loading certain maps, and sometimes fails to start requiring reinstallation. A loading error specifically prevents the game from opening on AMD graphics cards.

Physics and Handling Criticisms: Various physics issues are reported, including ground physics problems, nonsensical air physics, and suspension settings that have no effect. These contribute to an inconsistent riding experience.

Wooden and Bus-like Controls: Controls are described as wooden and the driving feel is compared to a bus on ice, indicating poor handling responsiveness. This aligns with other complaints about bike handling.

Random and Inconsistent Ruts: Rut tracking is criticized, with players noting that ruts appear random and do not consistently affect gameplay. However, some acknowledge ruts as a functional terrain feature.

Steep Learning Curve: The game requires time to get used to the physics and holding a line, with some needing hours to set up a bike and adapt to different conditions. This can be a barrier for new players.

Limited Customization Options: Bike customization is limited and mostly cosmetic, while rider customization is also mentioned. This lack of depth is a drawback for players seeking personalization.

Frequent crashes and freezes: Players report crashes during the first hour, freezes when opening settings, tabbing out, or on specific maps. These issues severely disrupt gameplay and suggest stability problems.

Poor optimization and performance: The game is described as a sloppy unoptimized UE5 title with choppy performance even on low settings with high-end GPUs like the RTX 3070. This indicates widespread optimization issues.

Lack of DLSS and upscaling: Players complain about the absence of DLSS and upscaling options, which are expected for modern games to improve performance. This limits graphical adjustments.

AMD GPU loading error: The game does not open on AMD graphics cards due to a loading error, making it unplayable for AMD users. This is a specific hardware compatibility issue.

Startup issues and reinstalls: Some players experience problems starting the game, requiring deletion and reinstallation. This prevents access to the game entirely for affected users.

Mixed Negative Purchase Advice: Several clusters express strong negative recommendations, including not worth buying, cannot recommend, not recommended, and refunds. This indicates a significant portion of players advise against purchasing the game.

Positive Recommendations Overall: Multiple clusters give positive recommendations, such as thumbs up and 'just buy the damn game'. This shows a notable group of players still endorse the game.

Targeted at Realistic Sim Fans: Comments indicate the game appeals to those who enjoy arcade or simulation experiences, while not being suitable for fans of hardcore sims like MX Bikes or MX Sim. It is also suggested for cross-game enthusiasts.

Supporting Developer Encouragement: Some players recommend the game to support the developers and encourage continued improvement, with hopes for future patches and a two-year cycle. One gives a thumbs up conditionally if the game gets better.

Needs Optimization and Polish: Feedback repeatedly mentions lack of optimization, jankiness, and overall lack of polish. Players cannot fully recommend until these issues are addressed.

Session length: 1.0h.

The reports show isolated praise for track deformation and competitive AI, but ongoing physics, cornering, career-mode, and multiplayer problems dominate without any reported time-based turn to fun.

Friction: Physics bugs bounce the rider up unexpectedly; Cornering feels awful and sluggish; Ruts and berms barely hook; No career mode; Multiplayer limitations and no compound opening in multiplayer; In-air physics problems.

Offline AI Career Racer: Races solo against AI, values challenging opponents, and avoids online competition. Motivation: Competitive offline racing and career-style progression without depending on multiplayer. Stance: sale.

Social Multiplayer Compound Rider: Plays multiplayer or co-op, explores compounds with friends, and waits for updates to expand social riding. Motivation: Riding and freeriding with friends in shared multiplayer spaces, especially the compound. Stance: no buy.

Motocross Handling and Physics Enthusiast: Focuses on jumps, landing weight, movement feel, and direct comparisons with other motocross games. Motivation: Authentic bike physics, weight, and handling that match real motocross or sim expectations. Stance: sale.

Unrealistic physics compared to sims: The game is compared to MX Simulator and MX Bikes, which have the gyroscopic force dialed, and to Roblox which has better cornering physics. Some expected a Reflex style game, which was the last MX game with intuitive and satisfying mechanics.

Massive improvement over MXGP 24: Compared to MXGP 24, this title is a massive improvement, and compared to MXGP 21 the new MX feels much different. Several reviewers see it as one of the best moto games since MXGP 2021.

Career mode missing but planned: The game currently has no career mode, and players want a career mode just like previous MXGP games. Career mode seems to be coming next year.

Mixed review scores and expectations: A reviewer rated the game 3/5. Some thought it would be the first good MXGP since 2018, and bought based on early access reviews saying it's 'not bad, quite good'.

Lack of bike customization: There is a lack of aftermarket parts to customize bikes, with only colour options available. Players wish to ride factory race bikes with their own character or have cool parts like race exhausts.