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After a couple of pedestrian years, the MotoGP championship has been back in scintillating form this season, thanks in no small part to the prodigal wonder that is Marc Marquez. The 20-year-old from Catalonia has found himself at the sharp end of the grid in his inaugural top-flight campaign, and he's wasted no time getting his Repsol Honda RC213V into places no rookie should dare to tread and at angles that his rivals wouldn't care to try, scraping his elbows across track boundaries in his trademark style while banging fairings with teammate and champion-elect Dani Pedrosa. Even skating down Mugello's pitstraight at 175mph on his backside a few weeks ago has done little to dent his puppyish enthusiasm. And after a couple of years without a tie-in game, MotoGP is back on consoles. To draw parallels between returning developer Milestone and Spanish hotshot Marquez may be a bit disingenuous. A more apt comparison, perhaps, would be with Valentino Rossi, the aging legend coming back after a couple of years in relative wilderness at the struggling Ducati to a competitive ride at Yamaha and the prospect of a podium place on a Sunday afternoon, rather than a midfield scrap.
In many ways, it's a successful homecoming for both Italians. Milestone gets what's great about MotoGP, and while the two Monumental-developed games half-heartedly released by Capcom in 2009 and 2010 had their moments - as, indeed, did Milestone's own SBK series - this is a partnership that just feels right. It's scrappy, yes, and there's much that will be familiar to anyone who's played the SBK games, but the studio's passion for the subject helps paper over so many of the cracks.
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