What would be a good arcade racing game in 2024? One that aims to be a bit like the Forza Horizon series, except with a whole open world twist? Yeah, okay.
I think this is probably the conversation that Milestone had when they started to make plans. Monster Truck ShowdownShowdown is the latest game to offer people like me — people who love incredibly silly vehicles shaped like giant bulls, hearses, or sharks that remind us of a time when the world seemed more fantastic and less scary — the chance to do backflips on wrecked cars and embarrassingly tell our friends how much we enjoyed it.
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It does a pretty good job of that, ostensibly focusing more on being a great racing game than specifically being a great Monster Jam game. Sure, you do a lot of the usual Monster Jam stuff. There are arenas you can play freely in, some short races around tight obstacle courses, and all the six-year-old licensed monster trucks you’d want. This time around, however, it’s all tied together in a world space that feels like it could belong in just about any off-road racing game.
The action is set in three real-world regions – Death Valley, Colorado, and Alaska – all rendered in a fairly realistic way, 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 can drive your monster trucks through them just like you would a trophy truck or rally car. Each region has a section of the map with its own specially built stadium to facilitate the entire stunt section of the game.
Compared to Showdown’s predecessor, Rainbow Studios’ Monster Jam Steel Titans game, it simply achieves the same goal in a slightly different way, but it does make the whole game feel quite different. Mainly because the game isn’t split in two this time around. While it doesn’t feature a full Steel Titans-style open world that you can freely explore between races, Showdown has absolutely put all of its eggs in that world’s basket, keeping the game from being split in two the way those Steel Titans games were. Where once there was an open-world section that facilitated longer track races and exploration, and a section that allowed you to do what Monster Jam and its trucks do in real life – travel to different arenas around the world and compete in sprint races and freestyle events that make up actual championships – there’s now a unified thing called the Showdown Tour, painted with a colorful UI and a slightly trendy musical sheen that feels very much like Horizon or The Crew Motorfest.
So what’s the racing action like in this car? Pretty good, although the collision physics can be a little wonky at times. A good balance is struck in making the truck feel bulky and solid, while also being able to maneuver around fairly technical tracks without feeling like you’re trying to park a World War I tank in your local supermarket. The boost mechanic helps a lot here, turning the races on many long tracks into a ‘point and spray’ fest, where you drift and ram things to build up a meter before unleashing a big burst to propel you over a jump or towards the finish line.
This also extends to the sprints, which contain more tight twists and turns, making them a real challenge to your ability to gently push the elephant around the track with expert throttle control and rear-wheel steering. When you jump into freestyle, your task is to rack up multipliers as quickly as possible – by doing certain moves or combinations of your choice – without screwing up and failing by landing on a roof or being unable to complete the bike it’s stuck on you. As with racing, the challenge here is enough to ensure that even those who eat mid-air wheelies, donuts and flips for breakfast will occasionally be careless, make easy mistakes and have to start over. There’s always some risk involved to keep the reward of completing a double backflip feeling as sweet as it should be.
All of this makes for a solid gameplay core to the Showdown experience, but the game still feels like it’s missing some personalization elements. This is especially true when it comes to customization. You can have your characters tap out every time they win, but you can’t give them a unique name beyond an online nickname, or customize their appearance with anything other than a nameplate-style splash. It would have been nice to have the option to build your own monster truck to go along with all of the official trucks in the game, especially considering that if this came with a fairly in-depth creation kit, cool stuff would undoubtedly be possible.
After all, the main thing that makes Monster Jam trucks stand out is their quirky designs, which seems like a given, even if it obviously takes a lot of time and effort to get right. The fact that each truck in Showdown has a special upgradable feature is clever enough that – even if it’s a bit basic compared to Steel Titans 2 – there’s a reason to keep switching and trying different driving styles as you play to see which boosts work best for each activity. For example, I personally really like using the classic Grave Digger in freestyle events, as it boosts the points I get for a few moves I do frequently.
So, as I said, Showdown is a game that offers a good overall racing experience, even if it arguably loses some of the unique Monster Jam flavour, even with the somewhat corny open world of Steel Titans 2, which has sections themed after different trucks. It’s far from the sheer vehicle variety that tends to really make its formula work, but if you just want to spend a few hours driving monster trucks around, it’ll satisfy.
Monster Jam Showdown will be released on August 29 on PS5/PS4, Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, PC, and Nintendo Switch.
