I have to admit, I didn’t really know much about Monster Jam before tucking into Showdown for review. I’m not sure why it isn’t that big of a thing over here, because let’s face it, it’s hard to find someone who doesn’t like the idea of Monster Trucks racing, jumping, and crushing their way around an arena with some high octane thrills. When the opportunity to review Monster Jam Showdown came up, I had to throw my hat in the ring to see what it was all about. What’s It Like? Put on your helmet, inflate those tires, and prepare for some big air as we review Monster Jam Showdown for Nintendo Switch.
Monster Jam feels like a celebration of all things monster trucks. Your mission is to earn tokens in 3 different disciplines to unlock more events and trucks to become the undisputed boss in the Monster Jam Showdown Tour. There are 40 different Monster Jam trucks to unlock throughout this Tour, and to start off, you will have 3 to select from that are specialists in 3 different categories. These categories are circuits, stunt exhibitions, and head-to-head battles, and each category has several different modes like Figure 8 tracks which are full of chaos, a game of hunters where you have to stay close to an opponent to “capture them,” and arena stunt challenges which I can only really describe as breakdancing with a Monster Truck… It’s all very loud and unapologetic and it reminds me of the recent resurgence in the “80s” style of movies that are happy to just be labeled as big dumb fun.
While the game doesn’t really have a narrative, the Monster Jam trucks are certainly the characters of this game with some amazingly cool, sometimes whacky designs, that made me try to track down how to unlock certain themed trucks so I could make it my own. Some are unlocked naturally via progression, whereas some require a certain amount of tokens from a specific discipline to battle against. These battles are played out in a bombastic fashion, with intro cutscenes setting the tone of the battle, and not only requiring you to place ahead of them but rack up a certain amount of points during the race as well. Some of these battles were challenging, but you are able to restart said battles with zero consequences making failure a bit easier to bear. There’s a lot of content here, even if it does recycle courses and settings, fans will certainly have a lot to do on the Showdown Tour.
The driving mechanics of Monster Jam Showdown feel refined, and the rear and front wheel steering of these machines adds a learning curve that slowly saw me turn off more assists the further I went along. Racing feels responsive and I had many close finishes and heart-pounding stunt moments that added to the general excitement of the gameplay. There is one bugbear, however, and that’s trying to get away from the pack. Hitting other trucks slows you down and nearly every race sees you stuck behind the pack, tangled up with other trucks. It made the start of the race a bit tedious, and there were several times when I was frustrated to no end (particularly in the figure 8 courses.) Once you break away from the pack, it’s a different story and I was drifting through the mud and snow with the best of them, hitting destruction boards and trying to rack up as many points as I could. You don’t have an exhilarating sense of speed while racing, more a feeling of wrangling a beast of machinery to bend to your will and stick to the track.
Monster Jam runs on the Unreal Engine which is used in games like Ark, Grip, and Moto Racer 4 and while compromises were made to fit on handheld from its larger console counterparts, the Truck model details were impressive, while some environmental textures seem a little lackluster. The pyrotechnics and other special effects are also a bit hit-and-miss, it’s nothing that really takes away from the game, but you can easily identify what was tuned down to make it all work on the Switches aging hardware. And make it work they did, because overall I feel like Monster Jam Showdown is visually impressive for what it is, and the game mostly performs well until environmental effects kick in which can drop the framerate a little. The game doesn’t really stutter, but it’s clear there are certain levels and settings that run consistently lower than others. I didn’t really find it too bad, except on some ice levels where the race seemed to run around that 20-frame mark. Also sometimes environmental assets took a slightly longer time to render than the rest of the level, leaving you with some flat trees. These issues were only minor in my eyes, and I was fairly immersed in my Monster Jam experience while playing. This is all backed by a rather generic rock and dubstep soundtrack that seems to loop much quicker than it should, and fails to stand out from other racers that are packed with licensed tracks.
For my Monster Truckers looking into accessibility, there are a few options here that will help you become the boss of the Showdown Tour like a myriad of driving assists to handle front and rear steering, air time, and drifting, allowing you to stay on track. You can even set a custom level of assist as well, giving you as much control or assists as you need which is nice. Most tracks are defined by barriers, but the environmental palette may be hard for some truckers to discern the path without these driving assists. There are a lot of sound options to tinker with that can make your racing experience more enjoyable too, with night mode and audio bars for many different things to give you further customisation. Environmental effects like rain and snow also feel rather aggressive at times, which may make navigation difficult, especially when jostling for pole position in a mess of machinery and rubber. As always, I recommend further research into finding out if Monster Jam Showdown is for you.
Monster Jam Showdown is one of those games that is all about big dumb fun. I spent hours racing around to fireworks, flamethrowers, and over-the-top jumps. The trucks are the stars of the show with many unique designs, and while there may be some graphical compromises to shrink these Monster Trucks to handheld, it’s overall a rather impressive visual package to immerse you in the Monster Jam World. While there are some frustrations breaking away from the pack, once you are able to open the throttle up, there are moments of excitement to be had and stylish moves to execute. Monster Jam Showdown manages to shrink big moments of action into the palm of your hand.
So, What’s It Like? Monster Jam Showdown is like Monster Truck Madness, crossed with Excitebike.
In the interest of full disclosure, a review copy was provided by Plaion Australia, but this doesn’t influence my score.
