Previews// SBKX: Superbike World Championship

Simulation mode, on the other hand, is the big boy's game. There's no room for error, and everything is as it would be if you were sitting on a Ducati bike racing around Monza right now. Luckily for utterly useless motorcycle racers like myself, there are three degrees of simulation to get involved in – Low, Medium or Full.

As you would expect, Low doesn't respect the laws of the simulated physics engine nearly as much as Full does – I tried turning a corner once with the latter setting activated. I crashed. Then I tried the next corner. I crashed. Any deviation from the racing line (which doesn't exist in certain levels of Simulation mode, I'd like to add) is a threat to your ability to stay on your bike it seems.

Clearly, 'Full' isn't the setting for me, but there are all sorts of added features to take into account if you do. Suspension, steering, gears, chain adjustment, tyres, brake power... all can be tweaked to your heart's desire.

And these factors will require your full attention if you tackle the Race Weekend mode, which has you racing around a specific track in five stages; two practice runs, the qualifier, the warm up and the race itself. Before each stage, you get to discuss tactics and technical issues with your engineer, while taking the time to tweak your engine on the fly as you test the track.

Beyond the Race Weekend there's your obligatory Quick Race and Time Attack, along with a fully-fleshed Career mode that gives you eight seasons to reach the top of the Superbike league. With over 80 contestants and 14 different tracks, you'll likely to be sucked in to it just as much as I did.

Getting all of this content in the game has been a complex job for Milestone, as Celetti explains; “There are many companies and many different licenses to consider when making a game like this. We have someone who goes on to the track and meets with the companies to make sure everything is OK, but at the end of the day we have to ensure all the time that everything we do is consistent with reality.”

It's not just companies that the team has to liase with – getting the the names and faces of the year's best SBK racers is also a challenge. As soon as they agree, an arduous motion capture process takes place with everyone in the respective teams, and Celetti spared a moment to thank those involved in spending days in their studio slowly moving wrists and ankles. “It may get tedious after a while but we have to be so precise with it, because if we go through all of that and end up not getting the team's approval at the end we have a major problem,” he said.

A part of those licensing efforts involved developing a DLC package known as the Legendary Roster – a selection of historical SBK racers that is sure to entice any motosport fanatic. One of the champions asked to participate in this colossal undertaking was Carl “Foggy” Fogarty, who has won the World Championship a record four times. So what does he make of the game?

“I think it's as close as you're gonna get, to be honest with you,” Fogarty said of the level of realism in the game. “I was just surprised, playing it earlier, how the Milestone guys have considered everything. What you see on the screen is what I would see physically going round the track.”

But he admits that his gaming talents don't match the fidelity of the simulation on-screen. “I've not played a game on a hardcore level since Space Invaders, really. And it's odd trying to reproduce what I do when moving my body in a real race into finger movements for a joypad. I was physically leaning round the corners with this pad in my hand!”

With a chuckle he says that perhaps Microsoft's motion-sensing Natal could cater to his unique play style better.