SBK Superbike World Championship (Xbox 360 Review)

If the Grand Tourismo franchise is the king of four-wheeled racing simulators, then SBK Superbike World Championship rules over their two-wheeled counterparts. Every element of this game screams authenticity: the racers, the teams and the twelve real world course you speed them around on. Honda, Yamaha, Ducati, and all the other big names in the sport bike world are represented in stunning realism.

This game is definitely made for motorheads and avid fans of SBK. Every element of your motorcycle is tunable from your gear ratios to the brake pad pressure. Every tweak directly translates into the handling and acceleration of your bike. I found the way to win races here is based on choosing the right pit crew over having the most skill.

Each team comes with their sponsored bike, as well as experience and reliability ranks. Teams with more experience offer more track hints and will be able to better optimize your bike with the auto configure option. This is important because courses like Monza have long straight sections and require a higher top speed, compared to a twisting course like Brands Hatch, which prefers tight handling and short accelerations. The decision comes down to taking the team with better experience, or choosing a team with a more powerful motorcycle to self-configure.

The options menu allows you to adjust the level of realism from arcade to extreme. Arcade has physics that are forgiving and keep the game simple. On the simulator and extreme realism settings, the physics are more complex and require you to move your rider with the bike to keep it from sliding out from underneath you. If you really want to challenge yourself, there is also a setting that makes it so your bike and rider can be injured and destroyed if you crash. Just don’t expect any “Burnout” style animations with this one because . The setting doesn’t add any unique visuals; the bikes and riders look the same no matter how damaged they are.

The most fun, albeit difficult, part of SBK Superbike is compensating for the speed of your turns. In order to go full speed you need to bring your rider as close to the ground as you can, without falling over. You know those pictures of racers scrapping their knees on the ground as they lean through turns? Those are the type of moves you need to do in this game.

The game offers several different modes of play including tutorials, quick race, time attack, challenges, weekend race and championship. The tutorials here are truly helpful and if you plan on running the realism setting on extreme, you better use them. Quick race throws you right into a race without any customization, while all the other modes let you choose your team, rider, and the racetrack. The weekend race takes you through all of the events of a real SBK race. Over the course of the weekend you go through warm-ups, qualifying laps, pole positions and finally the race itself. The championship takes you through all twelve weekends and racetracks. This is all done in real time, but gives you the option to skip forward at any point so you don’t have to wait all weekend.

So you might be feeling overwhelmed by all of the technical options presented, but that’s the point of this game. There is so much focus on realism that the designers skipped over making the gameplay fun. Right from the start, every bike, course, and racer is selectable. Throughout the game you earn trophies, while unlocking pictures of real racers and girls in bathing suits. There are no new bikes, racetracks, or even performance boosters. I would have preferred if the unlockable items in SBK Superbike affected the gameplay. Instead, you earn a few snapshots that could easily be found with Google images. My attention was completely lost after a few hours because the gameplay stays the same, no matter how long you play SBK.

Along with gameplay, the graphics are a big disappointment in this title. Every map is flat and has sparsely placed low-res trees and fans to make them remarkably similar. Granted the racing will require too much attention to let you enjoy the scenery, but I still felt like I was playing a cheap game: everything in the environment stands out like a cardboard cutout. The billboards and sponsorship logos are the most detailed objects on screen. Overall, the graphics feel like leftovers from the original Xbox and PS2.

With all racing games, the experience is made real by the sound effects. The motorcycles here sound very accurate when compared against their real world counterparts. It was nice to hear the low rumble of a Ducati engine versus the high pitch scream of a Yamaha. You could easily tell if a competitor was gaining on you if you were in the lead, and this really helped shape my gaming experience. Gamers hear music in the menu screens, but the music is absent during gameplay.

This game has very impressive physics and is one of the most realistic motorcycle racing simulators in terms of handling that I’ve played. Fans of SBK Superbike racing will love the level of complexity and involvement in fine-tuning your motorcycle in the pit. For those of you more interested in racing for fun over simulation, the graphics and gameplay in SBK Superbike World Championship will probably kill your interest after a day or two. If you really want to have fun, avoid this title and buy a bicycle instead. I’m sure pedaling and making “vroom” sounds around your neighborhood will have more replay value then this game.