Monster Jam Showdown GBAtemp review
PlayStation 5
Product Information:
- Release Date (NA): August 29, 2024
- Release Date (EU): August 29, 2024
- Publisher: Milestone SRL
- Developer: Milestone
- Genres: Racing
- Also For: PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S
Game Features:
In my previous review of Monster Jam Steel Titans, the outcome (on Nintendo Switch) fell far below acceptable standards. In my opinion, this game should never have been ported to the hybrid handheld. This time, I bit the bullet and gave Monster Jam Showdown a chance on the PS5 and boy, was I impressed!
Looks the Part and Plays Fantastically
The first thing of note is that playing this game is exactly how the developers would have intended it to be because the PS5 can handle framerates, weather effects, multiple trucks on screen at once, and gnarly levels of destruction!
The game looks brilliant, with oversized vehicles and crazy events, paired with varied tracks and weather conditions. Given that this is a non-linear game, you can go and do anything you like in whatever order you wish, as long as you crush enough points to progress in key sections the game lets you do whatever you want, which is a breath of fresh air compared to Steel Titans, though it's still not exactly "open world".
Events and modes include; typical circuit races, head-to-head, extreme head-to-head, figure-8, freestyle, extreme freestyle, best trick, treasure hunt, survivor, and horde.
Race events see you take on several other trucks in an epic fight to the finish, whereas the head-to-head events pit you against just one other truck in a small assault course-style short-but-sweet scuffle around ramps and tight bends. I wasn't fond of these shorter events.
Freestyle is an arena trick-display event whereby you perform combos a la Tony Hawks, sans the grinds, against the clock, to smash out some sick tricks and scores. Getting air and turning some mad frontflips, backflips, corkscrews and wheelies was quite exhilarating. However, it was relatively easy to rack up huge scores of 500,000+ which easily hammered the competing CPU-controlled efforts by a factor of 10.
Controlling your truck for tricking-out is as simple as holding the right stick at any direction off of a ramp, then chaining your landing with wheelies by balancing the triggers, and even lolloping off of a smaller ramp to go on two wheels. It's a really fun mode and the weight and gravity of the trucks is really well emphasised when performing flips and stunts.
The latter couple of these modes are essentially elimination-based races where if you're not first, you're last! I particularly enjoyed the tag-style event where you had to get every truck caught by overtaking them before the race ended.
Some of these events (treasure hunt and survivor) are online only and at the time of review, were unavailable to try out.
Nice Visuals, Easy to Pick up and Play
Graphically, Monster Jam Showdown is fantastic, except for a few oddities. Overall the environments are rammed with detail, your tyres leave trails everywhere, you splash through water and smash through snow drifts, and the atmospheric dust and fog ambience is unnervingly challenging to navigate through.
I really liked the rain effects dotting the screen, and the overuse of fireworks in this game is comically brilliant throughout, though this could just be because it's a traditional thing in America!
Your truck receives damage when you collide with other trucks, which, happens all too frequently, and was kind of annoying when you get hooked up on the wheels of another truck and have to ease off to give them space to move out of your way before you can even consider challenging their position. Perhaps the collision geometry is slightly off but this happened multiple times and in every single race, regardless, the effect of your carbon-fibre shell being ripped off and flexibly hanging off all sides is quite the spectacle.
Controlling the game is exceptionally simple, with all the controls where you would expect them, but you have rear-wheel steering implemented on the right stick when you aren't in the air. Triggers to go forward or backwards, like an RC car. You press the Circle button to boost, and use the left stick to steer the front wheels. It's childsplay to get set up and start racing!
By and large, the game looks awesome, with big air thrills and plenty of mud to tear up, but in some instances, there were questionable graphic effects that didn't quite look right. One example is when you encounter bodies of water that you need to plough through, if a light source is attempted to be reflected in it, the screen has this stupidly oversized glare effect that stays onscreen far too long and looks entirely out of place with the rest of the action.
Another, less noticeable one, is that when you use your accumulated booster, the draw distance seems to become affected and the detail ahead of you becomes shrouded in some sort of enveloping low-LOD weirdness. I'm not sure if this is intentional or a side effect of going too fast towards the environmental geometry, but it was odd nonetheless.
The sound design in this title is great too with revs and crunches sounding decidedly beefy, mud and water suitably squelchy, and the music providing an EDM/Dubstep/DNB pulse throughout.
Remove Driving Aids and Enjoy!
Now, I will admit that starting this game I opted for the 101 setting, and as a result, I had all driving aids turned on. This was a massive mistake because it left me nothing to do but hold the accelerator and aim to get a good "boost" start at the beginning of every race.
I started out racing with these settings and immediately noticed that my acceleration was throttled, I was holding it down and it kept lurching forward, slowing down, then lurching again. Another time I was trying to turn right down a possible shortcut, but the computer was overriding my idea and fighting against me with the steering, so what happened was I could neither turn right nor left and so I crashed directly into a central divider and lost several places in the race.
I was fuming and without a second hesitation, I deleted my save game and started again, this time in "Showdown" difficulty. This was the best thing I could have done, the game really comes into its own when you're fully in control.
Monster Jam Showdown is easily the best Monster Truck game I have played, and I think this is entirely because this is the undiluted, full-power, current-gen experience. Having looked up the gameplay of the Switch version to rip on, I have to admit that the Switch version also looks pretty well done, but where it trims the fat for optimisation is where the hyper-realistic vision of games director and developers gets dulled down to a sub-par low-poly potato effigy of something far greater, so please play this game on PS5, PC, or Xbox Series X to guarantee yourself the best experience!
Verdict
- Solid, enjoyable upgradable progress
- Feels great to race around with rear-wheel steering
- Split-screen multiplayer ftw!
- Turn off all driving aids to play the real game
- Not entirely "non-linear"
- Driving aids are ridiculously overbearing
- Collision is questionable
