SBK-07 Superbike World Championship review

Bike games are hard. Finding the inch-perfect line every time, keeping it on the black stuff and shiny side up amidst a field of amazing riders while juggling brake balance, lean angle and rider weight is a demanding prospect for even the most experienced gamer.

However, although we’re all for being eased into a game, SBK’s Arcade mode offers so much assistance that you can ride at full lean, at full throttle on the gravel without getting asphalt in your face. By way of contrast, the full-on Sim mode is so demanding that just using the front brake in a turn will toss you off. It’s almost easier to ride a real-world superbike than make a perfect lap of Valencia in the game. There’s a perfect balance somewhere in the middle, but we struggled to find it.

SBK-07 is one of the most contradictory games of all time. It does so much right, and then shoots itself in the foot. Or rather, it’s so average with a few dashes of genuine brilliance. Take the graphics - the rider animation from the chase cam is slightly rudimentary, but the sensation of banking from cockpit cam is unrivaled on PS2. Call us geeks, but we loved details like the working dashboards and two-fingered braking. But then we loathed oversights like the lack of any aerodynamic penalty on top speeds when sitting your rider up from behind the screen and into the airflow for a look behind on a straight.