Monster Jam Showdown review: Big wheels, big fun?

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Welcome to my high-flying Monster Jam Showdown review, in which I find out whether big horsepower on stilts with huge wheels equals fun.

As a kid, my tiny mind was blown when I first saw monster trucks. The noise, the size, the stunts – everything about them seemed wonderfully ridiculous. No wonder many developers have turned the motorsport spectacle into a game – the latest of which is Monster Jam Showdown.

Developed and published by Italian studio Milestone, Monster Jam Showdown is available on PS4, PS5, Xbox Series X|S, Nintendo Switch and PC via Steam. This time it is out with the open-world of Monster Jam Steel Titans 2 and in with a better experience but let us not get ahead of ourselves.

Monster Jam Showdown includes 40 monser trucks to unlock at launch with a further 26 coming via paid and free DLCs, plus more than 140 liveries, 120 events, 10 game modes, three environments (Death Valley, Alaska, Colorado), three stadium venues, extreme weather, and official and original events.

Multiplayer is available online and as two-player split-screen, while those who like competition can use the online leaderboards. Online multiplayer is for 1 to 8 players, depending on the game mode, and across platforms (including Nintendo Switch).

For those of you who play offline, presumably from the comfort of your nuclear bunker, the developer says all main game modes are available. Except, that is, survivor and treasure hunt.

Please note: This is the script from my YouTube video, click here or press play above.

Monster Jam Showdown Tour

Showdown Tour is the main career, where you get to compete against AI opponents in races, hunter elimination events, freestyle stunt arenas and even boss battles where racing and point scoring collide in one epic event. Win and you add another monster truck to your collection.

In Monster Jam Showdown, you can hop, skip and jump between locations and do the events mostly in whatever order you fancy – all as part of a stylish, if somewhat overly complicated menu system.

New areas and events unlock as you rack up those medals and it is possible to unlock skills for each monster truck. Beyond that, there is little depth so if you want to do some tuning or team management you will be sorely disappointed.

Utilising the Unreal Engine 5, Monster Jam Showdown looks excellent at 4K with an RTX 4090 behind it. I cannot comment on the console versions, but I will say that I did not experience any stuttering, while environment pop-in and other graphical oddities never caught my eye.

The monster trucks themselves are a highlight, each with varied, fun designs and loaded with detail. Favourites of mine include the American school bus (amusingly named Higher Education), the legendary Grave Digger, speedy Lucas Stabilizer and a teethy Megalodon shark. Unlocking each one is quite the draw.

Those fancy looks are more than surface deep. Truck shells can and usually do fall apart in dramatic fashion and paint can get scuffed, while environments also take a realistic beating. Your performance is, however, seemingly unaffected even if you drive like it is Destruction Derby.

The handling

The overall character of each truck feels similar, which makes sense as they are all super powerful, nearly four metres tall, weigh five tonnes and have 170cm-wheels. I suspect that there are some differences in performance but nothing major based on 20 hours of gameplay.

What I can say without hesitation is that the sheer size and horsepower lunacy comes across in Monster Jam Showdown. There is a reassuring meatiness when driving, the kind that rewards delicate steering, engine braking as opposed to brake braking and glorious controlled sideways stupidity.

Adding complexity is the fact you have the ability to steer the front and rear wheels separately – a feature useful for ultra-tight hairpins, sneaking on the inside of a competitor or straightening the back out at the corner exit as you reapply those many horse-ponies.

These American Dream machines love to drift in easily controllable fashion, cementing the game as more instant gratification arcade thrills than realism. Only a few scenery interactions let down an otherwise enjoyable handling system.

It may not necessarily look that fast when watching gameplay, but I can assure you that a combination of rapid-fire events, sometimes cosy tracks, aggressive AI and rapid acceleration make for a frantic time.

Jump, jump, jump around

Where things get less realistic is the ability to control your rotation during a jump. This is obviously not quite how physics works, but the rotation speed is believable and therefore only the biggest jumps will let you perform the craziest barrel rolls, flips and other cunning stunts. Careful how you say that.

Chain together enough maneuvres and you can earn seriously big points, which is a fun though inevitably repetitive process as there are only so many things you can do with a monster truck. And not a BMX or skateboard.

Truck-specific skills can be unlocked as previously mentioned. Though these give bonuses to experience earned so only enhance your speed of progression. Because the bonuses apply to different locations, it is a smart and not heavy-handed way to make you use different monster trucks.

Much like the system in Hot Wheels Unleashed 1 and its sequel – also from the Milestone stable – you have the ability to change your profile. Badges, banners, silly names, victory animations and more await you as you level up.

Even the AI system is solid as it does not do any funny stuff and will punish mistakes. However, once you get in a groove on ‘normal’ it is unlikely that your opponents can catch up so you may want to bump up the difficulty and get practicing.

Not my jam

Monster Jam Showdown is not without some faulty parts. One is the feeling of repetition as the number of circuits is limited. Challenge variation, altered routes and extreme weather effects help reduce familiarity, but it never quite disappears. Stunt arena layout variety could be better, too.

Clipping the scenery and rotating entirely backwards or losing all momentum is also not my favourite, as there is some inconsistency in what you can get away with. A little frustrating when the AI has no issue smacking into you.

This extends to the scrapped cars in stunt arenas. You would hope that ageing metal squishes and crumbles like in real life, but actually are rock solid and about as forgiving as frozen concrete.

It is also a shame that you cannot make your own custom liveries, especially as Hot Wheels Unleashed 1 and 2 have this functionality and it works well.

Worth buying then?

Monster Jam Showdown is not something I expected to enjoy as much as I have. Its solid arcade thrills, sizeable monster truck selection, meaty handling and bold presentation really do make it a fun ride. Especially for those who want short and sweet gaming sessions.

On the back-flip-side, the gameplay scope is much more limited than other big and brash racers such as the Forza Horizon games while a greater amount of variety and volume of content would have not gone amiss.

So then, the short attention span verdict: Monster Jam Showdown is happy doing the monster truck thing convincingly and with just enough depth and accessibility to keep young and old players hooked. Longer than for most previous monster truck games, anyway.

Monster Jam Showdown screenshots

Monster Jam Showdown review: Big wheels, big fun?

Verdict

Monster Jam Showdown is a loud and proud monster trucking experience that looks the part and plays the part but would benefit from more creativity and event variety

Positives

Great visuals

Fun handling

Plenty of monster trucks

Negatives

Event repetition

Needs more content

Couple of physics issues

70

The Score