Monster Jam Showdown Review

I’m not much of a car guy (read: not at all) but even I cant help but get all excited by the prospect of seeing monster trucks in action. There’s something just inately cool about them; from the sheer size of them, to the cool stunts, hyper-exciting atmosphere, and just, well, look at them. The closest I’ll ever get to driving one mind you is virtually, and so Monster Jam Showdown was an instant pick up. It does a great job of making these awesome machines look and feel as good as possible, and I’ve had a blast playing it this past week or so.

Monster Jam Showdown leans into the fantasy of letting us go wild with these behemoths, allowing us to thrown them around in races, stunt arenas, and special events such as Horde (where we have to eliminate racers by staying in front of them for a few seconds). We get a wide range of real world (e.g. the Legendary Grave Digger, Megalodon) and fictional trucks to drive, but no matter the choice they all feel great to control. Racing experts Milestone have clearly put a lot of love into giving the trucks a realistic, but also arcade-like feel.

It can be a bit tricky to get to grips with to start, remembering to use the brakes, as well as the back wheels to turn, and trying to find the sweet spot for balancing on two wheels, but after a few rounds I found it all started falling into place.

The Showdown Tour is the main port of call for solo players. Here, we have three areas that host multiple events; Alaska, Colorado, and Death Valley, each with their own feel and environmental effects (snow, dust, water etc). We can go to any area we like to play, and chose whatever events take our fancy.

Races are, well, a race against 7 AI trucks. There’s a physicality to the event, with trucks bashing each other about, though I did feel like there should have been a bit more…oomph…to the impacts. I would slam into a truck in front of me and it just kind of feels flat, the music muffling slightly being the only real consequence. It’s also a bit too easy to get tangled up together – either interlocked wheels or a front bumper caught in a rear axel – with the AI seemingly oblivious to us trying to wrestle free, quite happy to carry on their route with seemingly little issue. Track design is at least decent, with some fun, challenging courses to contend with. There are also multiple routes to take, and it was nice to see the AI not sticking to one but rather mixing it up as we played. A boost meter fills up as we race, and gets a healthy boost from a perfectly timed start or by performing stunts or smashing scenery along the route. It doesn’t last long but man does it send our truck flying along. Medals are awarded for top three finishes, all adding up to various unlocks such as new trucks, skins, name plates, and even new events.

The races are fun enough, but I much preferred the other modes on offer, including the aforementioned Horde. Head to Head has us tackling short courses against one other truck in elimination brackets while Figure 8 races add extra danger by having the trucks cross paths frequently. These shorter, more immediate events are a lot of fun, and thankfully are just as frequent as the regular races.

Of course, it’s the high-octane Stunt events that steal the show for me though, coming in one of two flavours. Extreme Freestyle is a more traditional take, where building up a combo without crashing the truck nets huge multipliers and points. Best Trick meanwhile is a bit more lenient, letting us crash out without instantly resetting our score, allowing us to go hell for leather in all manner of flips and spins to rack up points.

Stunts are physically handled, so performing a backflip (or the much harder front flip) needs a lot of speed and space to pull off. A combo of the analogue sticks lets us spin, flip, do donuts, wheelies, stoppies, bicycles, and a whole host of other tricks that the game has for us to learn. Each on has three stages to, with the longer held tricker naturally racking up yet more combos and points. In Extreme Freestyle, we can even keep the combo going for as long as we like after the timer ends, and I’ve racked up some mad scores almost by accident this way. Even if we do end up upside down we may be able to recuse it if one wheel can touch a nearby wall, and the trucks are prone to flipping like crazy at any chance we give them.

I’ve really enjoyed the stunt modes the most in Monster Jam Showdown, but it’s not without flaws. It’s too easy to rely on a few repeatable tricks and ignore others that take too much time (or are simply to awkward) to pull off. One of the early tricks the tutorial has us try is to land on our front two wheels and balance – I couldn’t do it there, and I’ve not managed it once in any event I’ve played. While the controls are fairly self explanatory, there’s no indication of how to pull off each trick outside of a video that shows it being done, but no reasoning on how the implement it on the pad. Again, most things are simple enough but the trickier ones could have used a bit more of a guide on stick placement perhaps to make them more enticing to keep trying to do.

The final feather in the cap of Monster Jam Showdown is online play, but we’ve been unable to test this pre-launch as you might expect. It looks to feature the full raft of modes on off in single player, and we were asked to sign in to our Epic Games Store account which will only help with the crossplay functionality. Two player split screen is an option too for local play should the need arise.

Conclusion

Monster Jam Showdown is a fun, action-packed racer letting us control the wildest, most over the top vehicles there are. A few quibbles with the controls for stunts aside, if you’re simply after a fun time, then this is an easy recommendation.