Games are expensive, and I'm a man of limited means and an enormous backlog. Which is why I've only just caved in and bought Driveclub Bikes, thanks to the January PSN sale. But anyway, I like it and I thought I'd get my impressions of the game from a motorcyclist's perspective onto the page. So without further ado, here are some thoughts:
First of all, there's some really precious metal on display. From Honda's seminal Fireblade to Kawasaki's insane, supercharged H2. Coolest of all, to me at least, is the inclusion of Ducati's unspeakably exotic Desmosedici. A limited production firebreathing MotoGP bike with headlights. However, it's sad to see the Suzuki's GSXR1000 (the hooligan's No.1) and Aprilia's RSV4 Factory missing from the roster. Especially when bankrupt also-ran EBR got their bike onto the list.
Away from the metal, I'm really impressed with the attention to detail. It's visible right from the moment your rider swings a leg over the saddle, kicks up the sidestand with their heel and then rocks the bike from side to side to get a feel for it. It's as if Evolution have secretly been watching me when I roll my Daytona out of the garage for a Sunday Morning ride.
The detailing carries on from there. There are flashes of biker bling everywhere. Ohlins gold, Brembo red, bare carbon fibre weave on the bodywork of Bimota's hand built BB3. There's grain in the rider's leathers. The bikes' revs rise when you lean off the outside circumference of the tyre. It all looks so good that I wouldn't be surprised to find Renthal logos on the sprockets and Pirelli written on the sides of the tyres. It feels like the details even extend to rider aids.
Modern Superbikes are very difficult for a regular human being to get the best out of. They weigh around 200KG and force somewhere in the region of 190BHP, as much power as a fairly hot hatchback, through a tyre contact patch the size of credit card into the road. In the wrong hands, that's a recipe for third gear wheelspin at full lean, slides and almost certain disaster. It's undoubtedly part of the appeal, but it's also why modern superbikes are festooned with rider aids. We're looking at stuff like ABS, lean angle sensitive traction control, wheelie control, launch control, slipper clutches, active engine braking management and quickshifters for clutchless gearchanges. The most exotic bikes come with semi active suspension too.
That's a lot of tech, and while I'm not saying Driveclub Bikes models all of it, you can see signs of some of those aids in the game. First of all, you can't lock the wheels at all, a sure sign of ABS. The game also seems to allow you to hold a certain level of rear wheel spin and slide before stopping you going any further and highsiding, just like the best traction control systems are purported to do. The most obvious sign that Driveclub is modeling a rider aid or two is the way the revs fall to bring the front wheel back to the ground when the bike wheelies off a crest - wheelie control. Which is what started me thinking about all that.
Other nice touches include the best stoppie animations I've ever seen and the way the bikes really buck about when you're reaching the limits. Just like when you see the best racers in the world wrestling with their machines in the MotoGP. The bikes all sound appropriately angry too.
Despite all this, Driveclub Bikes is not a simulation. For a start, there's a massive surfeit of grip, particularly in the rain, which allows you to brake really hard at full lean. Something you don't want to do on a real bike if you want to stay on the back of it. There are a couple of other gripes too, like how the AI seems to be quite slow, and I can't find a way to adjust their difficulty to speed them up. It's really easy to just ride away from the pack. Also, it's next to impossible to fall off unless something goes really wrong. Most annoying of all is how it's possible to go all the way down the gearbox, through first and accidentally into neutral. Something that is almost physically impossible to do on a real bike unless something is horribly broken. The biggest issue though is that the bikes all feel a bit samey, which I believe is down to the handling model.
For all it's faults as an actual racing game Tourist Trophy on the PS2 is still probably the best approximation of real bike handling in gaming. This is because Polyphony understood that real bikes steer not because you move the bars, but because the rider shifts their weight in the direction they want to turn. TT's handling emulates this, and it feels like you control the rider rather than directly controlling the bike. Weird though it may sound, my thought processes when I'm riding my Daytona feel very similar to when I'm playing TT. Tourist Trophy's handling model makes it's bikes turn gradually and look more natural than Driveclub's bikes, which tend to look and feel like they're just flopping left and right. Driveclub isn't the only bike game to feel like this, but I was hoping we could have moved past that by now, if only because it looks a bit naff. It's much more difficult to ride the kind of smooth lines that make good laptimes with Drivclub's bikes than it is with Tourist Trophy.
Still, Driveclub Bikes is a straight up arcade racer and when you take it at face value as one, it's excellent. The bikes are outrageously fast, and when you're scything through a complex of corners, inches away from the walls, it makes you feel like a road racing god, cast white hot from the mould of Guy Martin, Ian Hutchinson or Michael Dunlop. When the elements come together like that, all of the gripes fall away and you're left with an exhilirating ride. Just like the very best real world superbikes. Driveclub always felt like the natural heir to Project Gotham 4's arcade racing crown, and with the arrival of the superbikes, that feeling has never been stronger. Driveclub Bikes isn't quite the Bike racing sim I was expecting, but it turns out that it's an excellent Bike racing game. I like it a lot.
It's not quite as good as Road Rash II though...
