Monster Jam Showdown review

Grave Digger. Axe. ThunderROARus. Whiplash, and, of course, Bakugan Dragonoid. No, these aren’t the members of my newly formed boy band (unfortunately) but are instead just a few of the hulking metal monstrosities that you’ll be facing throughout your time with Monster Jam Showdown, the new extreme racing game from Milestone.

Monster Jam Showdown sees you bouncing, bashing and boosting, throwing yourself around in an extensive roster of monster trucks, whilst pulling off a range of physics-defying tricks and twirls, all whilst vying for first place, be it bonnet first over the line or with the top score in one of the trick based events.

From the off, I’m reminded of my younger years, spending the afternoon glued to a PS2 – but it’s not racing games I’m playing, it’s Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 2. It’s Dave Mirra Freestyle BMX. It’s, to a lesser extent, SSX and SSX Tricky. It’s the tone of early 2000’s extreme sports games, the bright and brash presentation and the fact that you can make these metal monstrosities spin on their axis in mid-air, land into a wheelie and then absolutely careen into a tree, smashing your truck down to its bare chassis. A sight to behold in itself.

The trucks, the stars of the show, aren’t just lovely looking liveries on wheels. Each has a unique aesthetic often with flashy parts on show. Why settle for a shiny muffler or big ole’ spoiler, when instead you could have some dangling zombie arms or maybe a shark fin? Each looks great as it flies around the track and even better as it explodes across the screen after you misjudge just how far away that tree is from the bed of your beast.

Choosing from a somewhat slim initial roster of vehicles on offer (but with many, many more to be opened over time), the main meat of the experience is a career mode, a mix of standard races, trick based score attack events, one-on-one sprints and a horde mode, the latter of which is really a glorified dash to be in first place before the timer hits zero.

All of these take place on slick mud, icy tarmac or hot desert sands, trucks barely gripping the “road” as you jostle through the pack in front of you. There’s almost never a time that I ever felt fully in control, able to stick to the racing line. It’s just not that kind of game. Terra firma is often a distant memory, “distant” being about 30ft below you. Or above you? It’s hard to keep track of these things when you’re halfway through a double backflip with an off-axis twist. And that’s not even taking into account the other racers who often end up tangled with your huge tyres, both of you careering off-road, parts flying.

As you can probably guess, the handling is extremely arcade-y with you taking control of both front and back wheels, the rear wheel steering allowing you to pull off some absolutely mad drifts and donuts, essential for high scores in the trick based events. The key in these events, much like THPS2, is to keep that combo going. Transition from a high-flying front flip into a wheelie into an extreme drift before pulling of a 1080 donut and you’ll soon be racking up the points, propelling you up the leaderboard.

Combine this with a slippy, slidey physics model that reminds me a little of the Motorstorm series or Xbox 360 classic Pure and you’re in for a grand old time. It does take a little getting used to but after a few laps (and subsequent crashes), I believe that anyone will get a good grip of the fairly loose handling.

It’s at heart a simple game with a fairly forgiving career mode on standard difficulty settings. It sets out to provide a straight-forward experience and does so well. Aside from this there aren’t too many bells and whistles: a shop for new trucks as you unlock them, new cosmetic skins for your fresh ride, collected via challenges in races, a customisable player card for online play. In the modern gaming world it feels a little bare bones at times, but that could be a boon, depending on your own personal preference.

I do feel an area that could do with a little more love would be the soundtrack. The in-game audio itself does a good job of conveying the crashes and crunches, engine roars and churning mud but the soundtrack itself left me a little cold. Maybe it’s an age thing but I’d have loved a fully licensed soundtrack of hand-picked tracks for your trucks whereas I’ve not found anything overly memorable in the current line-up.

Milestone have done a cracking job with accessibility options, allowing players to tweak difficulty options to their heart’s content. Be it via control options or opponent AI, it’s easy to tweak the difficulty settings to your own level, that sweet spot where you’re not just sitting lonely at the front of the pack but are actually having to fight your way through the mob, each and every place a hard-fought victory.

Monster Jam Showdown is an absolute joy for those who already have a vested interest in the subject matter, and for the rest of us, it’s a fun arcade racer in short sharp blasts. Combining the combos of PlayStation 2 classics with flashy, modern looking spectacle, Monster Jam Showdown is just muddy good fun.