April 1, 2023

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Monster Energy Supercross 2

Monster Energy Supercross 2 (MES2): Developed by Milestone S.r.l; known for games such as MotoGP, WRC and Ride are here bringing the second instalment of the Monster Energy Supercross franchise releasing on February 8th
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Review by Ethan Baron

Monster Energy Supercross 2 (MES2): Developed by Milestone S.r.l; known for games such as MotoGP, WRC and Ride are here bringing the second instalment of the Monster Energy Supercross franchise releasing on February 8th Upon starting the game, you are given the option for a basic Tutorial and if you, like myself are new to the series and genre in general, definitely start here as there is a steep learning curve. The next 20 or so minutes were followed by a detailed and useful simulation on a track that attempts to show you the ropes. There are also options for advanced courses from the menu.

After the tutorial concluded and I felt like a master, I tried to have a few practise races on the single event mode. There are over 15 locations to race including Las Vegas, for some gambling on your winnings.
There are also over 80 riders to choose from the moment you load up the game, and as it’s an officially licensed game, all of them are actual Supercross riders so expect the same level of detail on them as you would In other games such as FIFA.

Gameplay – Straight away you can tell this game was developed by Milestone with the hyper-realism they are famous for in their other games like Ride, and MES2 is no different. If Ride and the Dirt series had a love child, graphically it would look like this; everything about the tracks feel real, they feel like you are really riding on them.
The learning curve is steep however, and I soon found out even with the AI difficult at easy, I still lost almost all of my races and was not the master I thought. Everything about how your bike handles is controlled by you – slightly off on your landing? Expect to get thrown off, you need to time each jump and landing to ensure you don’t lose speed and time accelerating again.

Having failed at single events, I moved on next to Career Mode and started off creating my own rider. Almost all outfits are still locked at this point, so I moved on to choosing the team I’d be representing, there were a few to choose from, notably Honda, KTM, Kawasaki, I personally went with the latter. After this comes choosing a sponsor, sponsors offer special conditions in exchange for SX credits such as coming at least in 11th place. They also give you liveries for your Bike.

You start off by choosing your calendar for the next week, including things like training, press releases and promotional days, while finishing the week with the first event. You
also get a few rest days which I’m sure are to patch your wounds after the many falls and accidents my rider befell.

Other notable aspects of the game include the track editor which as its name suggests lets you create your own race track, which you can also upload, and other players can try too. While this feature is most common now in games like this, it’s still a nice thing to have and the way it works in MES2 doesn’t feel too dissimilar to the one they had in Far Cry which meant using it was easy to pick up.

The music that is hosted in the game fits with the theme, however especially with the menu music, there was almost no variation, so it got tedious very quickly.

There is also the compound which is a huge training ground that you can free roam and ride around to your heart’s content. Within the Compound, multiple players can join in together and ride, challenge each other even participate in events, with four distinct areas, destructible environments, and even weather options. It’s your personal play area.

Finally, the customisation, which rivals that of Forza Horizon 4, has thousands of different customisation parts for both rider and bike with so many tweaks that affect the way your bike handles, it was almost overwhelming when you have no knowledge on what any of the parts really do.

Overall Score 7.5/10

Summary: Milestone have done a fantastic job creating a very detailed and realistic Supercross game, and while being a complete beginner to the series and genre really, I still had a bit of fun trying to learn it. The music definitely let’s the game down, making those long loading screens and menu times drag on. Fans of the sport will enjoy this one!