I bought MotoGP 06 by THQ ages ago for about £10 and enjoyed it. It wasn't a masterpiece but it was enjoyable. For £10 I thought it was worth it. Then I bought MotoGP 07 for £5 in a sale, and while it kept all of the good things from the first one it also expanded on them, the graphics were better, the bike seemed to move around more and give you more feedback about how close you were to the edge. About 2 weeks later I saw MotoGP 08 for £20 and noticed it was under new development, so gave it a go. As soon as you take the first corner you can tell this is 10 times better than it's predecessors.
First thing you will notice is the Graphics. They aren't the best of the best but they are up there. They put the old ones the shame, the level of detail is much higher.
Secondly, the Sound, the older games had Prtty good sounds and this doesn't break the tradition. From the High pitched squeal of a 125cc engine to a 19k RPM roar of a ducati, it gets everything spot on.
Next is the Physics. MotoGP 08 has 3 physics settings: Arcade, Advanced and Expert. The older MotoGP games only had one physics model and that was around the advaned difficulty. the arcade difficulty makes it feel like you are driving a car, it is quite hard to fall off. The Expert difficulty however is really interesting. It brings proper physics to a bike game, I had never experienced anything this realistic in a bike game before. Where as in the Advance and Arcade physics models you can brake going through the corners to adjust your racing line, in Expert you need to know exactly how much you are going to brake before the corner, because if you try to break while turning you will low sidde straight away. Its alot harder to master but once you do it is alot more rewarding thaan arcade or advanced.
Multiplayer seems functional, i haven't played that much of it but it seems to be fine.
One more thing i should mention is the career Mode. Its a basic work your way to the top structure, where you start in 125cc series and as you earn points you work up the ranks until you are racing in MotoGP class. Its a great system but one drawback i found was there was no option to change the difficulty or bike physics once you had started a career.
Lasting impressions for this game: Reccomend, if you are into racers you will find something here. If you aren't then its probably a bargain bin buy, but a goodun. I look forward to future releases through Milestone and Capcom and hope they can improve on this already solid foundation of a game.