Monster Jam: Crush It! has made its way to PS4.
I’ve never had a particular fondness for cars. Give me something reliable that won’t break the bank and won’t fall apart and I’ll be happy. Still, I have a soft spot for driving games. Not those racing sims like Gran Turismo and Forza with their car eye porn but those arcade racers like Need for Speed and Trials where realism takes a bit of a backseat.
With as many vehicle-based games that have come and gone, you’d expect that someone would have made a memorable monster truck game at this point. I grew up in a time of Hot Wheels and often had to listen to the annoying engine roars of monster truck and dirt truck rallies at the fairgrounds near where I lived, so there’s obviously an audience. But again, no particular love for monster trucks either, as satisfying as it may be to grind metal cars underneath massive wheels.
I would like to say that my distaste for Monster Jam: Crush It! is due to my lack of enthusiasm for driving games, but I can’t. My distaste for the game is based on the fact that it is a hollow representation of an enthusiast sport and pastime, riddled with dull gameplay and poor controls.
Monster trucks are no doubt difficult and sluggish to control considering their size. That’s no excuse to make them control poorly in a game which first and foremost should be fun and entertaining. Stadium Races, Stadium Freestyle, and Hill Climb are the three modes players are given in Monster Jam. Both Stadium modes plop you down in tiny stadiums and offer little in the way of replay or enjoyment.
Stadium Races ask you to race against a competitor but calling it a “race” is giving it far too much credit. Some of these races can be completed in nearly 10 seconds because they only ask the player to make a half circle around the stadium from the starting point. The size of these stadiums feels suffocating, especially when you account for the size of the monster trucks. None of this is made better by the driving controls which feel as if the dirt under your wheels is coated with oil and water. Handling is not tight and trying to make an accurate turn feels nearly impossible at times.
Freestyle puts you in the same stadiums but asks you to perform tricks and stunts to earn a high score. Sound fun? In other games it would be but it’s just as mindless as the races. For a game called Crush It! there are very few cars to crush, which is a staple of the sport. Players can pull wheelies and twist around in the air by moving the right stick for air control. I got a few chuckles watching my beast of a truck do tricks like it was a skater in the Tony Hawk series but little else. At one point the truck flipped on its back, got stuck next to a pile of cars, and then flew up into the air. It was a thing of beauty in the worst way but did net me several thousand points to get a high score.
These modes feel like a slog because they are mindless, far too easy, and show absolutely no creativity. Developer Team6 could have done something to make this game unique. Why not take the monster trucks out of their familiar stadiums and have them driving around busy city streets like in Grand Theft Auto? It probably would have cost too much. Even worse, every course in every mode is locked until you complete previous tracks or meet the rank requirements in races. This same logic applies to the monster trucks. I was surprised at the sheer amount of trucks available and thought they all looked great. However, the act of unlocking them all is just as repetitive and confusing as the rest of the game.
Only a few things bring Monster Jam out of complete despair. Hill Climb is basically a bare-bones version of Trials where players must drive their monster truck up a hill collecting letters to complete the word “CRUSH.” It uses little of the physics-based mechanics of Trials but also only asks players to accelerate and control their vehicle in the air. I wouldn’t say Hill Climb is inherently fun, it’s just one of the only satisfying parts of an unsatisfying game. For anyone out there obsessed with trophies and achievements and doesn’t care about blowing a few bucks, Monster Jam is your game. In five minutes of Hill Climb I had earned nearly 25% of the game’s trophies with no effort. The path towards a platinum will likely only take a matter of hours, the question is just if you want to subject yourself to it.
Monster Jam: Crush It! is not a renaissance for monster truck games nor is it a capable game. Screenshots may allude to decent looking environments and better-than-decent looking monster trucks. Don’t be fooled, though, because there is little here to hold your attention for more than an hour. And even after that hour you will have likely not felt any reward. I would only suggest Monster Jam: Crush It! to the most die-hard of trophy/achievement hunters or to the three gamers out there that must play every single monster truck game in existence. Otherwise, just leave this one to rust in the junkyard.
Reviewed for PS4