MotoGP 23 Beginner's Guide: How to go from Rookie to Champion in no time!

The new game is out and as always, we're here with our MotoGP 23 Beginner's guide!

After a long wait, MotoGP 23 is now out worldwide and on all systems. There are bound to be a lot of newbies picking up this game series for the first time and we're here to help.

Just like last year, we've produced a beginner's guide to coincide with MotoGP 23's release, so that you can hit the ground running on two wheels!

MotoGP 23 Beginner's guide

MotoGP games are far from easy. In fact, Milestone's official Motorcycle Grand Prix games have consistently been one of the toughest racing sims to master over the past few years.

That said, the MotoGP games have been some of the best motorcycle games over the last few years too, and MotoGP 23 continues this trend.

Starting out in MotoGP 23 isn't as straightforward as you might think. However, you shouldn't be afraid - we're here to lend a hand as always.

If you take our pieces of advice onboard, you'll be challenging the likes of Fabio Quartararo and Francesco Bagnaia before you know it!

Walk before you can run

When booting up MotoGP 23 for the first time, you'll need to choose your game settings. Once you've gone through the visual and audio settings, you'll be greeted with the "Game Experience" options available to you.

There are four choices ranging from Rookie to Extreme. If you're unsure what to go with, choose Rookie and go on a Track Trial. This will give you the opportunity to feel how you perform in MotoGP 23 before you get to the first race of the year in Career Mode.

The track trial takes place at Mugello, one of the best circuits in the game. Mugello gives you a range of every type of corner, as well as one of the longest straights on the 2023 MotoGP calendar.

While this isn't as comprehensive as going through a whole race, it will allow you to assess which difficulty settings are correct for you without any consequences.

MotoGP Academy

One of the best new features in MotoGP 22 was the introduction of the MotoGP Academy. Thankfully, Milestone has kept this in MotoGP 23 and it remains one of the best ways to learn within the game.

Similar to the Driving Licence Tests in Gran Turismo 7, MotoGP Academy focuses on the basics and rewards clean and consistent driving.

The academy is available to try on every circuit in the game, including Historical Tracks. While Time Trial is handy, MotoGP Academy splits tracks up into their sectors for you to try out individually.

This more granular approach to improvement allows you to focus on specific corners which are catching you out. MotoGP Academy can be accessed via the Training section of the Single Player menu.

How may I assist you?

There is no shame in making the most of the assists in racing games - we all have to start somewhere after all. This is especially true when you're finding your feet within MotoGP 23.

In Career Mode, you can alter your "Riding Aids" by pressing triangle on PlayStation, or Y on Xbox. You can opt for choosing one of the Game Experiences we mentioned before or manually change each assist to suit you.

While the preset difficulty options are good, we recommend changing each assist yourself. This is because you may be very good at braking, but not as good at controlling the bike when accelerating out of low-speed corners.

We recommend spending some time in Time Trial and the MotoGP Academy and finding what your sweet spot is in terms of both assists and the level of the AI.

Something to bear in mind though is that the more assists you have, the slower your ultimate pace will be. So, it's best to shave the assists away before increasing the AI's speed, if possible.

Setups are key

As you start turning the difficulty levels up within MotoGP 23, you'll probably start to hit a glass ceiling. The only way to break through that is to improve the setups of the bikes you're running with.

Just like with MotoGP 22, we'll be bringing you setup guides for every circuit in the MotoGP 23 game. There is no such thing as a "one size fits all" solution to MotoGP racing, as what works at one circuit might not work at another.

While every player will prefer to opt for slightly different settings for their bike, our setup guides will give you a very good starting point to perfect the performance of your ride.

Something you should also do is make use of the "Guided Setup" feature within MotoGP 23. When you're in the garage during a race weekend, you can provide feedback about the bike's performance to your engineer.

The engineer will then change the bike's settings accordingly and you can head back on track straight away to see what difference it's made. This is where the free practice comes in handy most during single-player, as you'll need these to optimise the bike's performance.