Monster Jam Showdown Review - These Trucks Need More Time In The Garage
It has been a quiet period for releases. I had been getting through some backlog games and revisiting some favourites but I was ready for a new game to review. That’s when PR reached out to me. Monster Jam: Showdown, a new Monster Truck arcade racer that promises a good career mode and crazy racing. I thought that sounded exactly what I was looking for. A good blast of fun before the bigger releases hit and drag me into massive reviews that take all of my time and energy to finish. So, with hope in my heart, I agreed to the review code, taking a PC code and diving in. That, I feel was my fatal mistake, because what followed wasn’t pretty.
It’s not that Monster Jam Showdown is a bad racer, it is just so poorly optimised for the PC that it made enjoying its good qualities almost impossible. The first thing I noticed is that the game didn’t support ultrawide resolutions. Look, that is a bit behind the times but I can live with it. What made it a nightmare was that, unlike other games that don’t support ultrawide, it didn’t just put black bars on either side of the screen. It could only be played in windowed mode which meant that Windows was always getting in the bloody road (as Windows does.) If I forced it to play in an exclusive fullscreen mode it just stretched the image making the whole thing look terrible. What’s an even bigger pain is that I also have a standard ratio monitor connected but the game doesn’t let you select which monitor to use (again, another modern convince PC players are now used to) so to get it to work on that monitor I had to reshuffle my monitor settings in Windows which was something I was loathe to do.
So instead of fighting with this painful presentation on my very expensive, top-of-the-line gaming PC, I decided the best option was to play on my ROG Ally. Now the Ally did a good job with the game, running everything at a smooth 60fps at medium settings and, it actually looked quite nice. I was hopeful at this point, that despite the rough start, I could have a bit of fun here. The racing kicked in and I was enjoying this different take on the genre. But then other errors started to pop their head up. The trucks would, on occasion, randomly veer off in the wrong direction. I thought this might be related to the assist settings, so I turned them all off and it still kept occurring. On more than one occasion, when leading the race and about to win, my truck would spiral off in the wrong direction, crash and cause me to say nasty things about the game’s parentage.
To top it all off, other little bugs get in the road of having a good time. Weird physics glitches, invisible barriers and some seriously dodgy AI all conspired to suck any goodwill I had for the game from me, leaving me an angry, annoyed husk that was only playing on because I had this very review to write. This is the very definition of a terrible PC port. At least I hope for the game’s sake it is only the PC version that has these painful issues.
I hope that because when the stars align, the moon is in the 7th zenith and the game is running well, it is quite a bit of fun. It is pure arcade shenanigans with a great driving system that allows players to use both joysticks to get these beasty trucks to turn on a dime, do barrel rolls or chuck doughnuts that would make your local rev head cry with joy. The career mode is solid, if nothing ground-breaking and there are a tonne of different Monster Trucks to unlock, tracks to race and event styles to compete in. It is clear the developers actually care for Monster Trucks and in no way does this game feel like it is just a tacky cash-in attempt.
That, in my mind, is Monster Jam Showdown’s biggest sin, the squandered potential. This could have been a great little arcade racer that scratched a particular itch that doesn’t get scratched too often in the modern era. But instead of a fun racer you pulled out when mates were around we are left with a broken, frustrating mess of tech issues, poor optimisation and glitches that will have you swearing like a sailor. I just hope the console versions fare better and that the PC version is heavily patched soon so that potential is reached. A bad game I am happy to ignore and never think about again, but a game that has a legitimate chance to be fun, only to be ruined by tech bullshit is something that is going to haunt me for ages. I hate to see a game released in this state and I am sure the developers feel the same way. As sad as it is though, I cannot in good conscience recommend this game to anyone, not even a Monster Truck enthusiast. Perhaps after a few patches, it will be worth your time, but until then, avoid.
Monster Jam Showdown was reviewed on PC with code kindly supplied by the publisher.
