PAX Aus - Hands on with MXGP 3 for Switch

Under the Shadow of War, MXGP 3 was playable on Switch and marks the first time motorcross has come to a Nintendo platform since Excitbike World Rally back in 2009, so it is filling a gap, but they don’t appear to have rested on their laurels.

Released on other platforms earlier in the year, Milestone know their bikes and it was received well then and looks to continue with this version. There are a variety of game modes on offer, Career, Grand Prix, Time Trials and more and while I only stuck with the time trials in my hands on, no reason to suffer defeat in the game just yet, it still offered all the control and racing action. The course was 1.5km in length so it took a while to get around, but each jump, rise and turn keep things interesting, of course, without racers to compete against, there was only so many times I could race around, before it started to become meh.

The controlling of the bike was the great, each time I went to make a tight turn, if I went to fast, I went barrelling off the side of the track, get to far off course and the game resets you back, so knowing that I was not too worried. Where in most games, holding the left trigger would apply a break, here it engaged more of a drift, so there was a lot of throttle control required, letting off the gas, while applying some drift was the way to make it around the turns, over time it started to become second nature, but slight distractions were enough to convince me, I could never be a real-life racer.

The game looked fine, lots of details on and off the track, the Switch is of course not a visual powerhouse, but it looked ok to me. The most important part is that the game was running at a solid pace, it was on a dev unit, so there was some fps counting happening on screen, but I honestly ignored it and just enjoyed the game. While the Motocross series is not for everything, the game should do well on Switch, it is different from other racing games and seems to have a lot of options to keep players returning