Luckily for fans, the Monster Truck Championship aims to revitalize an often forgotten niche as well as revitalize public interest in this type of transport.
Monster Truck Championship is a fun game, even if it doesn’t quite live up to all the promises made by the developers. The Monster Truck Championship bills itself as “the first monster truck simulator.” And although the ambitions are laudable, and the final “product” is quite arousing interest, in practice it is rather difficult to equate this game with such a loud statement. The developers at Toyon Studios have an interesting game, but, unfortunately, not one that is likely to grab the attention of fans in the way that many other similar projects have been able to.
The roar of the engine
In fact, the Monster Truck Championship is fun when it works. The races at high difficulty levels are intense and brutal, mainly due to the well-tuned artificial intelligence system in the game. Trucks seem to be reasonably weighted, yet resilient and flexible. They are also quite difficult to control as the front and rear axle control can be different between a clean race and a first lap rollback.
It is great that the game includes the mechanics of destruction and drag racing, thanks to which the game manages to simulate all key aspects of the track, fully embracing the various elements of monster truck racing that even those with little interest in the sport can recognize.
Control elements
The Monster Truck Championship is pretty much a solid training mode that introduces players to all the signature tricks used by professional drivers. There are even quite useful modes for a first acquaintance here, but sometimes it seems that the developers have greatly simplified them in order to make control using the controller more debugged. The simulation fails with force feedback in the Monster Truck Championship.
Even at maximum gaming settings, the feeling of the road and fatigue is practically absent. There is no tire stability information that prevents players from controlling the vehicle while cornering. Even worse, if the player lets go of the wheel while turning. It will continue to rotate at full speed until it reaches its limit, and then it will return abruptly in the opposite direction many times. And this process never stops, so you can easily burn the engine if you leave it in this state for too long.
Inadequate training
Additional simulation aspects of the game are missing in terms of hands-on content. Time Trial is simply single races with a certain number of laps. It is impossible to track the time relative to the previous lap, and there are no peculiar “ghosts” for the laps covered, thanks to which one could understand what the mistakes on the laps passed. For a game that is based on simulating real-life monster truck driving, it seems odd that these types of learning-based features were not included.
Outcome
Otherwise, the game Monster Truck Championship will be able to present an extremely addictive gameplay, but if you play on the controller. It simulates the appearance of the sport well, even if it looks more like an arcade game in the end than a real simulator. Unfortunately, there is no way for players to hone their skills with convenient steering and pedal adjustments, as this affects the development of the skills that real drivers have.
Minor changes in the formula would definitely save the “title” declared by the developers from negative feedback from users. And serious changes in the support of the wheels of the game are necessary if the developers of the Monster Truck Championship plan to further develop this unusual simulator.
