Rider animations are solid. He'll move back and forth across his bike as you negotiate him through each turn, use his little legs to walk his bike backward out of trouble, and lift his body just a bit when braking. From the start, he'll struggle to contain his machine as it rises and attempts to wheelie its way down the road or flip over backward on him. Fortunately, you can instruct him to hunch forward into a tuck to gather extra speed or sit back in the saddle when you want to transfer weight to the rear of the bike.
The physics modeling, while not perfect, should satisfy those who've ridden a bike in the real world and know the difference between a 250cc and 1000cc machine. Indeed, a skilled rider who's taken the time to get past the game's flaws and learn the course inside and out will eventually come to terms with his bikes' impressively complex idiosyncrasies and use weight-transfer maneuvers to his advantage. Word to the wise: The braking distance of some of these big 1000cc land rockets is absolutely huge, so prepare accordingly.
You'll get an entirely different view of things if you select the game's first-person or pseudo-first-person perspective, where you'll watch the events unfold while bobbing about like a cork in a tsunami. This may be the best perspective for sheer thrills, but it's also the worst for getting around each segment without falling off. It's downright harrowing--or sickening, depending on how well you can handle the constant, abrupt movements--but it does let you see what a real-world rider might see, including functioning gauges, handlebars, and a translucent windscreen.
Arguably more difficult than watching your bike crash or bob and weave about from the first-person view is enduring the never-ending sequence of game loads and unloads. Not only does Suzuki TT Superbikes go into temporary hibernation every time it moves from a menu interface to a gameplay interface and vice versa, but it also won't allow a race restart without first heading back to the menu and committing a double dose of unloading/loading. The degree to which this bogs down the fun factor cannot be overstated, particularly if you commonly wreck early and simply want to start over, or if you just want to see a replay.
There are other annoyances. The game's garage, for example, offers arcade-type general adjustments to six different areas of your bike, yet refuses to remember them from race to race. Your preference of camera perspective isn't saved, either. Once on the track, you'll quickly see that the artificially intelligent competition is almost completely immune to crashes--never falling off independently or during battles with each other, and generally going for a tumble only after you've made a deliberate effort to bash them to the ground. And even then they won't fall unless smacked very, very hard.
To its credit, Valcon has included a top-down map that you can switch, on the fly, from "local" (a few hundred meters ahead of you) to "global," in which the entire segment is displayed. In a game in which turn preparation is so critical and the track segments often so indistinguishable from one another, this map is indispensable.
Suzuki TT Superbikes also sounds really impressive, especially if you have the luxury of a surround speaker system. You'll likely want to turn down the music and tweak its many volume settings to your liking, but you'll be glad when you do. The various engines are very convincing, varying palpably from deep-throated roar to highly stressed whine and correctly signaling your current state of acceleration. Tire squeal is variable and very telling, and the track announcer/advisor is crucial for alerting you early to upcoming turns and particularly narrow passages. A smart rider will eventually switch the music completely off and minimize the engine sound so they can better listen to their tires and the announcer.
Multiplayer racing, conducted via a two-person split-screen interface, is perhaps the most exciting way to play the game. Here, you aren't forced to trounce the robotic AI riders, though you'll certainly become bitterly embattled with human opponents, who tend to fall from their bikes as easily as you do. However, the game's inherently sinewy tracks and twitchy handling characteristics won't change just because you're competing in multiplayer mode, so some degree of experience is necessary on both players' parts to ensure competitive racing.
Suzuki TT Superbikes is not easily mastered. That's a good thing in some respects, because it's a comparatively realistic game that will continue to challenge you in the weeks and months ahead. However, it will also frustrate you, due in no small part to the claustrophobic nature of its tracks, the control limitations of its sole platform, and its penchant for long, drawn-out interface loading procedures. And it certainly doesn't deliver an abundance of divergent environments. If you can handle its quirks and restrictions and if you enjoy simulations rather than arcade-type racers, you should find it to your liking. If any of the above bothers you, you may want to steer elsewhere.
- See more CNET content tagged:
- segment,
- perspective
Suzuki TT Superbikes (PlayStation 2):
%20PlayStation%202%20Game%20reviews%20-%20CNET%20Reviews&srcUrl=http://reviews.cnet.com/playstation-2-games/suzuki-tt-superbikes-playstation/4505-9581_7-31556287-2.html){kind=small}