What makes a good arcade racing game in 2024? Are you aiming for a bit of an evolution of the Forza Horizon series, aside from the whole open world thing? Yeah, okay.
I think this was probably the conversation that took place as Milestone began to develop its plans. Monster Jam Showdown. Showdown is the latest game to give people like me the chance to ride on giant bulls, hearses, or downright silly vehicles in the shape of sharks that remind us of a time when the world seemed more wondrous and unimaginable. Such terrible times.
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It does this very well, ostensibly more focused on being a good racing game than specifically being a good Monster Jam game. Of course, you’re doing a lot of the usual Monster Jam activities. There’s some arenas where you can freestyle, some sprint races around tight obstacle courses, and all the things you could want in a six-year-old licensed monster truck. This time around, however, everything is tied into a world space that feels like it could belong in almost any off-road racing game.
Events take place in three real-world locations – Death Valley, Colorado, and Alaska – and all are presented in a fairly realistic manner, just as they would appear in a Forza or Dirt entry. One is a desert, one is a muddy woodland, and one is a snowy tundra, and you drive a monster truck through them just like you would a trophy truck or a rally car. Each area also has a portion of the map with its own purpose-built stadium to facilitate the entire performance portion of the game.
It’s just a slightly different approach to the same goal as Showdown’s predecessor, Rainbow Studios’ Monster Jam Steel Titans game, but it does make the whole thing feel a lot different. Mainly because the game isn’t split in half this time. While it doesn’t offer a full Iron Titan-style open world that you can freely explore between matches, Showdown definitely puts all its eggs in this world’s basket to create a Games that aren’t – like those Iron Titans. There was once an open world that facilitated longer track racing and exploration and allowed you to do exactly what Monster Jam and its trucks do in real life – travel to different arenas around the world and compete in short races and The tournament consists of actual championship freestyle races – now there’s a unified thing called the “Showdown Tour”, painted with a colorful UI and a vaguely stylish musical sheen that feels a lot like Horizon or The Crew Racing Festival.
So, what does the racing action look like on this thing? Pretty good, although there are some minor issues with the collision physics and it can be a bit laggy at times. Striking a good balance in making the truck feel bulky and sturdy at times like it should be, while also being able to maneuver on a technical track without feeling like you’re trying to park a WWI tank at your local supermarket. The boost mechanic helps a lot here, turning many of the longer track races into a “point and spray” feast, where you need to keep drifting and smashing things to build up the meter and then use a big burst to get you jumping or sprinting to the finish line.
This also extends to the shorter sprints, which contain tighter twists and turns, making them a real challenge, with expert throttle control and rear-wheel steering letting you dance around the track with your giant tires. When you jump into freestyle, your job is to accumulate multipliers as quickly as possible – by performing certain moves or combinations of your choice – without screwing up and failing by landing on the roof or failing it to haunt you Want a bicycle. Like racing, there’s enough challenge here to ensure that even those who eat spinners, donuts and flips for breakfast will occasionally stumble, fall into an easy mistake and have to start over. There’s always some risk involved in keeping the reward of completing a double backflip as sweet as it should be.
All of this provides a solid gameplay core to the Showdown experience, but the game still feels like it lacks a bit of a personal touch. This is especially true when it comes to customization. You can have your characters tap on every win, but you can’t give them a unique name beyond your online handle, nor can you customize anything about their appearance beyond a nameplate-style splash. It would be nice to have the option to build your own monster truck to sit alongside all of the official trucks in the game, especially considering the cool things that can undoubtedly be achieved if equipped with a fairly in-depth creation suite.
After all, it seems like a given that the main thing that makes the Monster Jam truck stand out is its quirky design, even if it obviously takes quite a bit of time and effort to get right. In fact, the special upgradeable features that each truck in Showdown has are neat enough—albeit a bit basic compared to Iron Titan 2—that will keep you switching and trying out different rides as you play. way reasons to see which boost works best for each event. For example, I personally really like using the classic Grave Digger in freestyle competitions because it improves the score I get on several moves I do regularly.
So, as I said, Showdown is a game, although it could be argued that it has lost some of that unique Monster Jam feel that even Iron Titan 2 had with its stereotypical open world themed around different trucks. style, but it provides a good overall racing experience. It’s nowhere near the sheer vehicle variety that often really sings the formula it’s aiming for, but if you’re just looking for a few hours of fun monster trucks to toss around, it’ll do the trick.
Monster Jam Showdown will be released on PS5/PS4, Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, PC and Nintendo Switch on August 29th.