For me, Monster Jam Showdown isn't this awesome experience worthy of a novelization with subsequent movie rights and at least an Oscar nomination. But it reminds me of the golden days of the PlayStation 1 and
—maybe even a little PS3 with Motorstorm. Since I didn't know any better at the time, every new game I got my hands on seemed like magic. I didn't even know what “game design” meant back then.
As a kid, I would easily get immersed in racing or sports games and do my best to get into the top three. I would just play for the fun of it, while unknowingly, the hours of my childhood melted away, never to return. Not to mention that the experience was even more magical with split-screen.
Luckily, Monster Jam Showdown feels like it came straight out of that era, but with a modern look and feel. The rear-axle steering takes a little getting used to, and it has a horrible soundtrack, but it's a solid game that grew on me the more I played it.
Photo: autoevolution
How does it work?
So what exactly is Monster Jam Showdown, for those of you who haven’t tried it? Well, there’s nothing too complex about it. It’s modeled after the real, action-packed Monster Jam motorsport, where highly trained drivers climb into their 10.5-foot-tall (3.2 m), 12.5-foot-wide (3.81 m), 17-foot-long (5.18 m), 12,000-pound (5,443 kg) monster trucks with 1,500 horsepower and drive their hearts out.
More importantly, Monster Jam fans will recognize the virtual counterparts of the real trucks, such as Alien Invasion, Axe, Bakugan Dragonoid, Dragon, Grave Digger, El Toro Loco, Blue Thunder, Jurassic Attack, Kraken, Monster Mutt Dalmatian, Pirate's Curse, Max-D, and two of my favorites, Megalodon and Zombie.
With the Season Pass and all, there will be 66 trucks, including historic vehicles and toys, but the base game only includes 40 of them. The remaining 26 will come via free or paid DLC. They also come with an assortment of liveries or skins and have levels that provide XP or score bonuses.
In short, they are all the same, aside from their names and appearance, but the bonuses they offer set them apart. For example, at level 3, Megalodon provides a 150% bonus to your Drift Stunt score. Blue Thunder at level 3 provides a 250% bonus to your Destruction Stunt score. Others simply award extra XP (experience points) if you use them in one of the three main regions: Colorado, Death Valley, or Alaska.
Photo: autoevolution
While they all have the same feel and handling, it’s not a knock on the game design for not adopting the typical acceleration, handling, and top speed meters found in racing games. If nothing else, it levels the playing field and makes you learn the mechanics better.
Trying each one as soon as you unlock one is rewarding in itself. Some, like Zombie, are better suited for drifting bonuses, which really help during races and stunt arenas. So you'll be switching between them quite often depending on the map and the type of race or event.
The single player mode is perfect and I found no flaws in its design. It is as basic as possible, without a story, but in a good way. There are various events, such as Head-to-Head, Circuit, Figure 8 Racing or Horde. My favorite was the latter, where two trucks are “the hunters”, trying to catch the others by driving in front of them to fill a meter.
The events at the stunt arena left me speechless. When I first heard about it, I rolled my eyes and said, “My God.“But it's basically like Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2, where you do tricks and try to beat the AI opponents' high scores. The trick is to chain together tricks and stunts without ending up like a turtle on your back.
Photo: autoevolution
If you do, you'll lose everything and inevitably start hitting the Restart option. Every timed event in the arena kept me on the edge of my bean bag, completely focused on the task at hand. And as for the list of tricks, it's huge. You have your standard Base Stunts, followed by Mega Stunts, but if you're really good at your job, you'll try your hand at doing Ultra Stunts.
The single player game modes fall into three main categories, which are pretty self-explanatory: Race, Stunt, and Short. You start with a handful of races, and as you earn tokens for placing in the top three, you unlock more regions and boss fights. The nice part about the bosses is that you keep the model you fight after you win.
Showdown has four difficulty levels. The easiest, difficulty “101,” is for those who have never touched a controller before. It's packed with driving aids to help players steer, drift, and navigate corners. Then there's Easy, Showdown, and Extreme. Since it's my first Monster Jam title, I didn't dare choose the last one, but I chose Showdown and found the perfect balance. Even more so, the further I went, the more challenged I felt.
It took me about an hour to get used to the rear-axle steering activated by the DualSense controller’s right stick, which functions more like an honorary drift stick than a second steering wheel. The monster trucks never go faster than 100 mph, except when accelerating, so the tracks are short, smooth, and full of twists. Make sure you learn how to drift properly because you’ll be doing it for 90% of every race.
Photo: autoevolution
Transmission is semi-auto by default, but you can change it to manual in the settings, along with the AI difficulty. There's even a Game Speed slider that defaults to 100%, which you can lower to 70%. Every game should have this as a standard option, to help new players, older players, those with injuries, or those who can no longer press buttons at lightning speed.
As for multiplayer, the split-screen is fun and the system works overall, but it doesn’t really brim with innovation, aside from the cross-play support. There are about eight game modes, which add an extra level of spice to the regular counterparts. These include Extreme Head-to-Head and Freestyle, Best Trick, Circuit Racing, Figure 8 Racing, Survivor, Horde, and Treasure Hunting. In short, the online component is Monster Jam with friends or foes, and that’s all it needs to be.
I played it on the old PS5, so I have some comments on the console version. Graphically, it looks great, although apart from the real-life inspired truck models, there is nothing that really stands out, despite being developed in Unreal Engine 5. The lighting looks good and the textures, shaders, car models, map geometry, physics and special effects all look nice and polished.
More importantly, in terms of performance, it ran like a dream at 60fps with crystal clear visuals. The HDR feature or color palette are nothing special, but they serve their purpose well. The pre-release build I played was bug-free, except for an annoying visual issue involving puddles from a couple of maps. Other than that, I didn’t encounter anything threatening, like frame drops, crashes, errors, freezes, micro-stutters or anything like that.
Photo: autoevolution
As for the features of the PlayStation 5 DualSense controller, I wouldn't say I'm in love with them. The triggers do their usual job and “fight” with your finger, so the acceleration feels literally abrupt. There's nothing wrong with that, but it's not impressive either. Fortunately, you can tinker with the Trigger Effect and Vibration feature in the Controls menu. The sound coming from the controller's speaker wasn't very flattering either.
The Bad and the Ugly
The music was just a noisy mess to my ears. Maybe it’s because I’m getting older and don’t understand what the young people on TikTok are listening to these days. Or maybe it’s just bad in general, and that’s about it. To me, it sounded like a bunch of empty, sentient cans screaming for their lives as they waited their turn to be turned into shrapnel by a mechanized grinder.
Descriptive, I know, but that's the image my ears gave me. I bet it was the same with our parents when we played Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2, Dave Mirra Freestyle BMX, Need for Speed Underground, Most Wanted, etc.
The only bug I encountered was the weird blinding glow I mentioned earlier on some maps with puddles. For some reason, the glow or reflection of the puddle took up almost a third of the screen and I couldn't see where I was driving during that part. I highly doubt that “It's a feature, not a bug,” and I expect the issue to be fixed soon after release, if not sooner.
Rating 77/100
For someone who has never played a Monster Jam game before, I was pleasantly surprised by this gem that feels like a blast from the past and put my worries on hold for a moment or two while I played. It’s nothing extraordinary, but its simplicity makes the game feel honest and complete. It’s also incredibly fun and well-made. Monster Jam Showdown doesn’t pretend to be anything it’s not, and it joins my list of recommended games for 2024.
While I wasn’t a fan before, after playing this, the next Monster Jam movie starring Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson has landed on my bucket list. The $50 Standard Edition will be available August 29 on PS4, PS5, Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, and PC via Steam or the Epic Games Store. The $70 Big Air Edition includes the Season Pass and three days of Early Access.