Monster Truck Championship is the latest from developer Teyon, which has previously put out games like Urban Trial Playground, Terminator: Resistance, and Rambo: The Video Game. As the title suggests, the core gameplay loop revolves around racing monster trucks and performing in events to win championships, while even allowing players to micromanage sponsors and employees.
With how far and few between monster truck games are, especially those of a technical variety, Monster Truck Championship has an interesting premise. Unfortunately, in many ways, the game fails to live up to the expectation. The game mostly delivers on its promise, but this comes at the cost of several other components of the game, including the monster trucks themselves.
With 16 trucks, 25 arenas, and 3 leagues, Monster Truck Championship sounds like it should offer enough variety to keep fans entertained, but it becomes old hat really quick. There’s only a handful of game modes, including race, drag race, time trial, freestyle, and destruction, and with the arenas spread thin across those options, players will find themselves on the same track multiple times. Then, with roughly 30 or so events spread across 3 leagues, the gameplay loop becomes surprisingly small.
It doesn’t help that these game modes are mostly uninteresting. Most are standard in racing games, and with the big draw to monster trucks being their ability to wreck smaller vehicles and perform insane stunts, freestyle and destruction would seemingly be where the game shines. Instead, these game modes are short stints to perform tricks and run over objects without feeling any of the monster truck’s raw power. Whether it’s driving through a trailer, dropping down on a car, or hitting a port-a-potty, there’s no power behind the gameplay—these trucks ultimately feel neutered.
This is true across all aspects of Monster Truck Championship‘s gameplay. Monster trucks are, by definition, anywhere from 10 to 12 ft tall and weigh anywhere from 9,000 to 12,000 pounds, and they tend to blow an average of 5 motors each year. The raw power behind one of these machines is their biggest draw, yet Monster Truck Championship makes them feel 2 ft with poor physics. When hitting other trucks or objects, there’s no visceral reaction. Perhaps worst of all, it often seems like the truck isn’t even touching the ground, instead just gliding around.
Upgrading the truck requires winning events and earning money to buy better engines, better tires, or some new cosmetics for the truck. There are enough customization options where players can create a satisfying truck, but with a limited selection of upgrades, Monster Truck Championship players aren’t doing much more to the truck than getting the next best thing. There’s some micromanagement of the team and sponsors, and players earn bonuses when completing a sponsor contract, but it all ultimately seems like fluff to expand the core content of the game.
In failing to deliver upon the sheer strength of a monster truck, Teyon does manage to deliver a highly controllable and immersive experience, with the right settings. Many may default to no damage, automatic third-person gameplay, as this would seem to show off trucks more, but changing this to full damage, manual first-person gameplay offers a much better experience in Monster Truck Championship. The damage isn’t particularly exciting to see, the automatic transmission doesn’t add much to the game, and third-person doesn’t offer a lot of immersion.
Seeing the hits from the steering wheel looks and feels much better, having to manually change gears in a race or to perform tricks is much more satisfying, and being in the truck makes it feel more like it arguably should. This means players have to control their trucks to their utmost ability, adding a challenge where it doesn’t exist otherwise. This approach allows for a fully immersive experience, but it will only work for those who truly buy-in to getting the most out of the game. Choosing more casual options results in the game feeling more like a bad racing game.
Ultimately, Monster Truck Championship‘s controls are the one thing that stands out from an otherwise repetitive and dull gameplay loop, thin content, and questionable game physics. Many monster truck fans may have been waiting for that “next good monster truck” game that manages to deliver on all fronts, and unfortunately this is not it.
Monster Truck Championship releases October 15 for PC, PS4, and Xbox One, with a Switch release planned for a later date. Game Rant was provided an Xbox One code for the purposes of this review.
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