Hot Wheels: Monster Trucks Stunt Mayhem review

Now, I don’t know an awful lot about monster trucks outside of gaming and it’s been an awfully long time since I sat outside on the garden path playing with toy cars, launching them into a flower bed off a make-shift ramp of books and an A4 folder. But, like any mid-forties man-child, the prospect of great big engines strapped to even bigger wheels being launched through the air, pirouetting as they go, such as in Hot Wheels: Monster Trucks Stunt Mayhem, can’t help but elicit a grin.

Featuring a selection of motorised monstrosities from real life Hot Wheels, you’re thrown into closed arcade arenas full of ramps, barrels, cars to smash and a ludicrously over the top “boss”.

The heart of the experience will be chucking your truck around, attempting to keep the combination multiplier going as you trick from ramp to ramp, collecting golden coins along your route to rack up the points. You can rotate on all axes, sickeningly spinning through the air before attempting to land all four wheels firmly on terra-firma. Throw in a flashy special move, each unique to the truck and you’ll soon be up to double-digit combo multipliers. These specials are often an easy way to end a combo safely as they will right your vehicle in mid-air, no matter what insane angle you happen to be at.

With an exceedingly bouncy physics engine, actually nailing the landing in Hot Wheels: Monster Trucks Stunt Mayhem without a special isn’t actually as easy as it sounds, and you’ll often find yourself precariously balancing on two wheels as you hurtle toward the next obstacle. Should you misjudge any of this and find your view of the world to now be upside down, a quick button press will have you upright and ready to roll in a matter of moments, straight back into the action, though admittedly with your hard worked for score now depleted.

Tasked against an ever ticking timer, there are a number of objectives to complete in this time limit including a stunt score to beat (built up by performing tricks whilst maximising your combo score), a destruction target (by destroying targets, shacks and the aforementioned barrels), a find the “thing” challenge (be it a hot dog stand or a golden balloon), a given trick type to perform, or finally, beating the boss three times. This involves finding three standees to smash your behemoth through which then allows passage to the boss, possibly a loop the loop or another unique, crazy jump to throw yourself through, damaging its health bar in the process.

Unfortunately, there’s a bit of disconnect here as the same animation will play each time, the camera panning out for a more dramatic shot of the action, your truck hurtling through the air. This has the effect of pulling you out of the moment and really slows down the pace of the game. Given the fact that you have to do this process three times to complete the objective, it can get a little tedious, especially as you will repeat the process numerous times throughout the game.

You won’t be completing all of these trials in one round however, with only one per arena to complete in the earlier stages, Hot Wheels: Monster Trucks Stunt Mayhem ramps up the difficulty throughout each area until you have ever increasing scores to beat and three tasks to complete in the latter stages of the game. It does get tougher but it’s never too challenging.

The on-screen replicas of the tiny trucks look great, overhead spotlights bouncing off glistening chrome and windshields, each with a selection of skins to unlock as you progress through the campaign. Unfortunately, it’s the arenas themselves that lack in variety or a real sense of character, in stark contrast to the stars of the show. Although there are a number of unique biomes to unlock, there’s just not enough contrast in each to really differentiate one from another. There might be a touch of set dressing but each arena feels much the same as the last, with little to tell them apart bar the boss.

Coming in at around four hours play time, I can’t claim to have finished the game to 100% completion but I did get through all of the single player mode, completing almost all objectives. There’s just not enough content here to draw me back in for more, with the same tasks being repeated ad infinitum, even in the other game modes: Stunt, Destruction, and Boss mode. These are stand alone versions of the regular game objectives and don’t offer much more than a focussed version of what you’ve already been doing.

I think that with just a little more time and attention, there’s actually an excellent game hiding just below the surface. Add in more varied tasks to complete, a larger list of fancy tricks to pull off and a selection of hit songs and you would have a motorised version of the Tony Hawks’ series ready to roar onto the market. It just needs more content. There’s definitely potential here and I hope that this acts as a solid jump-off for 3DClouds to build upon for future games in the series.

With that said, there is certainly fun to be had, especially for a young gaming audience who will ooh and ahh over the special tricks and the animated boss spectacle. It’s simple to understand with an unfussy interface, ideal for little ones to jump into. It’s also the title that can lay claim to having the most realistic looking plastic wheels that I have ever seen in a game. You can almost smell them.