Is 2024’s Unsung Gem a Monster Truck Game? Monster Jam Showdown Review

Many longtime gamers will have fond memories of the early Monster Jam games, not to mention getting to control iconic trucks like Gravedigger, Venom, and Bigfoot. Fast forward two or do decades, and the idea of piloting oversized turbo-charged trucks over jumps and bends hasn’t lost its lustre – it’s as entertaining as ever, and Monster Jam Showdown is the perfect nostalgia hit of simpler times when racing games were about one thing: fun.

Like older offroad racing games like Flatout and Destruction Derby bringing an alternative spin on the ultra-polished racing game genre, Showdown harks back to those days in glorious, muddy fashion.

Coming from developer Milestone, who, at this point, just has a knack for delivering solid racing experiences, Monster Jam Showdown excellently recreates the spectacle of the monster truck experience, while leaning into the audacity and bonkers nature of the whole motor-powered discipline.

In the spirit of this, the concept of showmanship and tricks is what is important in Showdown, and the freestyle trick component of the game is well implemented, allowing you to pull off some pretty outrageous stunts in front of the screaming crowds. Much like a Tony Hawk Pro Skater game, you’re given linear tracks or open stadiums filled with skate-park-like ramps, obstacles, and objects to utilise to the best of your ability in order to do flips, wheelies, spins, and barrel rolls.

It’s made even more accessible due to the fact that the controls are responsive and intuitive, allowing you to link together tricks with relative ease and manipulate your monster truck to your will. It’s a great improvement, as previous games in the series have felt quite ‘boxy’ and tank-like when controlling your truck, but seeing the suspension dipping, wheels locking when needed, and throwing the weight of the car around is much more in line with your controller inputs. Some great physics deliver a feeling of power and weight when you launch your 5-ton mechanical monster off a death-defying ramp, which is what we really want.

If you lean more into the racing department, the game’s Showdown mode is essentially a world tour-like career mode, allowing you to compete in a number of races through some surprisingly detailed canyons, forests, and other locales, while peppering in some additional challenges, like a freestyle face-off against a ‘boss’ or another rival. The game does a great job at building the ‘personas’ of each car, much like a wrestling match, which is half the reason people fell in love with the sport in the first place.

Of course, what makes many racing games good is how ‘alive’ the tracks feel, and Showdown delivers gorgeous circuits and offroad routes, shaken up with great particle effects, dust, gravel, and mud-slinging around to add to the whole visual side of things. Milestone has done a fantastic job of bringing the presentation elements of the game up to scratch with the bombastic real-life nature of the events. The trucks are loud, drifting through fences and bushes sends them flying all over the track, and the score notifiers are bold and in-your-face — this is the digital monster truck experience fans want, and it’s definitely worth checking out for anyone with an inkling of interest.

Monster Jam Showdown is available on Xbox Series X/S, PS5, Xbox One, PS4, Switch and PC.