My rating: ★★★★☆

Moto Racer 4 (MR4) is a motorbike racing game featuring two categories: asphalt and dirt bikes. MR4 offers a career mode, split-screen and online multiplayer.


If you can look away from all the cons, you receive a great game for an affordable price!

7,5/10 I don't really understand why everyone is bashing Moto Racer 4. Its actually a pretty neat game, fast-paced and incredibly fun ! AI is challenging, and it takes quite a while to unlock everything, but tracks are amazingly built! Of course it's not as good as a Moto Racer 2, and there are some flaws, collision issues or gameplay choices that can be annoying (Betting on your position before racing is clearly not a good idea!), but I'd definitely recommend MR4 if you're into arcade-racing games!

• Genre tags: Racing, Multiplayer, Motorcycles, Arcade
  
• Value Proposition: If the game had been not have given away en masse I'd have much more mixed feelings, but being that this was completely free. I can't complain much.
  
• BSERC - (Borderline Sardonic and Extremely Reductive Comparison): Touches of Burnout, PGR, Kinetica (a PS2 game where you race as a human with wheels attached to their hands and feet and do tricks) – Is this JetMoto?

MotoRacer 4 is an arcade racer. Containing both asphalt and dirt tracks. However I find the asphalt ones much more satisfying. The dirt ones seem like an afterthought.

This feels a little like Mario Kart – Hear me out before you slay me for heresy. I don't know if any of you are familiar with snaking (The act of rocking back and forth between left and right to gain a turbo boost on a drift, specifically snaking refers to drifting and earning a turbo down straightaways) but MotoRacer 4 has something not entirely different as far as timing boosts and doing specific things to gain the boost for an advantage. For instance, since this is not simulation slip-streaming does not just increase your speed by removing air resistance. But rather earns you a short boost, you can also earn boost by landing with both wheels level to the ground which at times does not always seem correct if it were a proper sim racer. Additionally, you have a boost you control yourself that recharges at various speeds depending on the bike you've chosen setup.

There is no mechanic to control the riders weight, so despite occasionally having my instincts chime in and attempting to pre-load the suspension on jumps or lean into beginning of turns and level off coming out – there'll be none of that here.

There is style point system, which is where the PGR/Burnout comparison comes from. Driving into oncoming traffic and having near misses earn you points, as well is doing wheelies (they happen automatically when you boost) landing well to earn boost among other criteria. There is also a fairly simple trick system. (the Kinetica reference)

I really like the aesthetic, it's sort of this cartoonish faux sci-fi.

Now, the game has some texture pop in -- significant pop in – but it's nothing to really worry yourself with. Unless you paid for this.. That's valid.

There is online and split screen multiplayer and a single player campaign. The modes within are fairly robust. From standard lap races, elimination rounds where a timer ticks and the last place is removed, slalom between traffic, keeping in first to start a personal timer (feels vaguely like Oddball mode in Halo, probably a strange comparison) among some other modes that earn you stars to unlock new events and upgrade the bikes you've unlocked. You can bet stars at the start of an event which is an interesting concept but ultimately doesn't change that much as it resets every time you attempt.

THE GIST
It's a decent romp. Poor optimization definitely is not helping the final product but all things being said. For free, its great. For full price.. user value will vary.

More here — Station Argus

I played a lot Moto Racer 1/2/3 and especially World Tour on PS1/PC back in the days so I'm rather sad, disappointed to give a no to MR4...

MAIN PROBLEMS:

• Cannot change any keybinding through options menu (come on).
  
• Cannot change sensibility: unplayable even with a gamepad, it's way to high.
  
• Bike sounds are not very good, which is important for a racing game.
  
• Optimization is not perfect: sometimes textures take a little time to load and/or there are random FPS problems.

That's a shame because there is even a split-screen mode so it could have been very fun for some couch gaming sessions.
Asked for a refund... ☹

Avoid MR4 until a patch which resolve the fact you cannot edit controls and sensibility. It's simply unplayable in its current state... get MR Collection instead:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/324110/Moto_Racer_Collection/

Not recommended.

This isn't a bad game by any means. Most of the hate for this games come from who is publishing it. Microids is an independent company and has long been associated with indie titles in the adventure genre. Microids owned the license to Moto Racer and had received alot of feedback requesting another one. The company has seen a reformat in recent years, and most of the staff is now very young, and no longer under the thumb of a console giant. All this being said, the game itself plays in vibrant and beautiful style. Most complaints are that it is not ,"realistic," enough. Moto Racer was never a realistic racing experience on motorcycles and was over the top rally style. People unfamiliar with the classics immediately compare them yet most were infant or just being born during Moto Racer's prime. If you played the original Moto Racers this is the correct style of spiritual revisitation. It's beautiful, it's fast, it's low on setup time, it's grab and go.

This game is fresh, new, better. While it's not a AAA title, it looks great, and plays at extremely high speed. It's also fun to play against a friend. This is not a racing simulator. And it never was.

Mediocre races with good visuals

When I decided to review this game, I knew close to nothing about the Moto Racer franchise. So before playing it, I decided to educate myself by reading reviews and Wiki pages for the earlier entries in the franchise. The original Moto Racer was hailed “as the first outstanding arcade-style racer to appear on PC” and Moto Racer 2 had “more courses than its predecessor, a level editor, garnered positive reviews from critics, praising its graphics and variety of gameplay”, eventually being nominated for "Best Racing Game of the Year" award at IGN's Best of 1998 Awards. But it looked like the series heyday was in the past: Moto Racer World Tour and Moto Racer 3 received “Average” and “Mediocre” reviews, and Moto Racer 4 finally received "generally unfavorable” reviews and have an almost empty Wiki page. YIKES

Booting up was an immediate contrast with the previous racing game I played, Need for Speed Most Wanted 2012. While NFS MW embraces the concept of an open-world racer, Moto Racer 4 is closer to a classic arcade racer - you go into a menu, choose a level, and start racing. Personally, I enjoy open-world racing games, but Moto Racer 4’s structured racing philosophy didn’t feel that bad. It’s a refreshing take in an era where everyone just wants to follow the latest trends like open-world racing and in-game economy. This game feels comfortable enough to shun those trends and stick to its guns.

There are two types of races: asphalt and dirt. Asphalt races are all about speed - you’ll usually be cruising above 250km/h, and the world will feel like a blur (with a strong depth of field distortion). Since you get a speed bonus when you perform a wheelie, you’ll be doing wheelies almost 24/7 on this mode. Dirt races, on the other hand, are a much mellower affair. Speeds usually hover around 100km/h, with lots of stopping and going. You’ll face a lot of ramps, tight corners with sharp drifts, and narrow corridors, all the while doing tricks in the air. Since I signed up to play a racing game and not Tony Hawk Pro Skater, I assumed asphalt would be my jam and dirt would suck. The reality is that dirt racing is surprisingly fun, even though it feels a bit slower. Doing tricks is nothing special and not even that fun, but it works well enough. On Career mode, you’re constantly switching between asphalt and dirt, which provides good variety and keeps the game fresh a bit longer.

Now, handling makes or breaks a game. One thing that NFS MW, Burnout Paradise, and many other good racing titles share is the fact they are developed by Criterion, a developer that clearly mastered racing game handling systems. Driving in NFS MW has weight and heft – your car is responsive, and braking is something you rely on to win when conquering sharp turns or outwitting your enemies. Racing in Moto Racer 4 feels like guiding a drunken cockroach over a slippery glass floor while trying to follow a Roomba robot vacuum that is balancing plates on sticks. During long straight stretches, this isn't so noticeable; worst case scenario, you go off-track, lose a bit of speed and style points, but quickly get back on track. But when you need to avoid incoming traffic, snake through curving roads, or drive near the center of the road because the side barriers are off, the handling gets rough. Some levels are extremely frustrating, pitting you against an endless torrent of semi-trucks heading your way, which is incredibly hard to avoid due to poor handling. Or they’ll send you off between sky islands with a narrow bamboo bridge connecting them, which you’ll constantly fall off constantly before crossing. Most turns can be conquered by simply stepping off the gas, without even worrying about braking..

Since we’re being critical, let’s talk about the TURBO system. I have a hard time believing the system’s design actually played the game because it’s hard to imagine how someone would allow this feature to be shipped after testing it. In theory, it’s a good idea - when you’re driving, you can press and hold A (on my Xbox gamepad) to start performing a wheelie, which gives you a basic speed boost. If you press A again with the right timing you’ll get an extra speed boost. You can customize how sensitive the timing window is, which reflects on how much extra boost you’ll get. Good timing, good rewards, right? Except that trying to hit the timing while also steering your Frankenstein motorcycle that handles like an oil tanker becomes very distracting and will probably make you crash sooner or later, costing you a race. If you try to TURBO and miss the timing, your motorcycle will slow to a halt before picking up speed again, heavily hurting your standing in the race. But if you don’t TURBO enough, you’ll lose the race anyway since the other racers are abusing it, so you’re caught between a rock and a hard place.

But now, you might ask – what’s the big deal in losing a race because of TURBO? After all, this is an arcade racing game, right? Well, yes and no. Moto Racer 4 has a pseudo-campaign mode broken into 11 chapters, where you need to earn Stars and Style Badges in certain events. Earn enough Stars in a chapter and you qualify for a Championship. Beat the championship and you unlock new riders, new chapters, and new tricks/techniques. While this all sounds fine, once again the developers managed to ruin it. When you choose an event, you need to set a target: conservative, moderate, or risky. Beating the conservative target is easy and will yield one star, the moderate will be a bit harder and yield two stars, and the risky target is worth three stars. However, if you choose the risky target and don’t beat it (even if you beat the moderate or conservative targets), you LOSE stars – meaning you leave the event with fewer stars than you started. This is a pain in the ass because maybe you had unlocked a new chapter, but if you go back to a previous event you already beat with one or two stars, try to get three, and fail, you could actually gate your unlocks again - GAH!!!!

This is frustrating because, of course, you want to take risks and unlock more things in the game. But at the same time, the fear of having to run the same event two, three, or five times gets too big, and you suddenly start to aim low, particularly on longer events. Sure, I don’t mind replaying the time trial that takes one minute, but I don’t freaking want to play again the five-race championship where each race has three laps and takes 5 minutes. It’s a freaking half-hour that can be lost in the last minute in the last race, as it happened to me when I fell off a bridge due to poor handling. Those small design choices are what take this game from a decent, enjoyable arcade experience to a despicable cesspool I probably will never look at again. And that’s tragic because it’s something so easy to fix, and they never had to try it out. Probably someone at the company thought it would make them stand out from the fray – well, it did, but not in a good way.

There are a couple of final points I want to touch on before wrapping up. The game has an upgrade system where you can use your style badges to increase your racer’s stats. However, style badges are somewhat hard to come by, and it’s hard to notice what difference these upgrades make. In the end, this potentially nice system feels wasted, and you’ll probably end up upgrading one racer to the max on both asphalt and dirt bikes and never looking at other racers or at the upgrade system again. The graphics are based on Unreal Engine 4, which doesn't look bad but also never stands out. The levels are varied and feel a bit like “classic arcade racer worlds” – a desert, a forest, an Eastern Asian limestone cliff valley, a futuristic city with concrete dams and bridges, etc. Maps, by the way, require a lot of memorization because you rely heavily on shortcuts and muscle memory, given how closely other racers track you. It’s pretty much a given that if you’re not leveraging those

Game is crashed,.... keymaping not working,..... Turn lef = Q turn right = A
Developers must me retarded when programing controls movement. Its 2020,... please fix it

Got it for free, expected nothing, but I was surprised by a nice little game!

No realistic simulator of course, but fun arcade racing with nice graphics and atmosphere, online/splitscreen mode and full controller support.
If it was a little cheaper, it would be perfect!

8/10

Usually I dislike games that are about racing with bikes. They all have some issues such as the game is old and looks bad, the physics are bad, the controls are bad(I'm picky about racing games) etc. This game on the other hand must be the only game of this type that I like, it surprised me.
Ignore the people who claim it's unrealistic, that it performs poorly and that there is no story or anything.
This is arcade racing, it's not trying to be as realistic as possible. It runs completely fine on my system that's not super high end build(i3, 750ti, 8gb ram). Who cares about story in racing games? Just look at EA trying to include story in NFS games for example, it doesn't work and nobody cares about it, we play racing games for the racing part.
The price tag is questionable though when you look at the game as whole. And it uses Denuvo apparently.

I've played all the other bike games such as MotoGP, Ride and I did not enjoy them at all. I haven't played the Valentino Rossi games and Ride2 so I cannot compare it to them. But comparing Moto Racer 4 to the rest bike games on steam I can say that I enjoy Moto Racer 4 the most of all of them.

Edit: For those having problems with the bike not turning left this fixed it for me - Find this file:

<YOUR DRIVE>:\Users\<USERNAME>\AppData\Local\MR4\Saved\Config\WindowsNoEditor\Input.ini

Edit this line(somewhere at the bottom):

AxisMappings=(AxisName="MoveRight",Key=A,Scale=-1.000000)

with the letter "A" above representing which button you want to use to turn left. Save the file.