Monster Jam
Almost from the moment I turned the game on, I could see ‘destined for the bargain bin’ written all over this one. It isn’t a bad game, it just isn’t up to par with what gamers have come to expect for fifty bucks.
The game is fairly fun, but also very bland. Just about any theme could have been put into the racing for this game and it would have fit. Nothing, outside of the freestyle events, says ‘monster trucks.’ The action can be addicting, but many of the races are won more by luck than skill. The trucks also feel very light and floaty for what are supposed to be 10,000 pound vehicles (the average weight is one of the interesting facts the game gives you during the loading screens). The trucks have a speed boost that is similar to nitrous and is almost unlimited (you know, just like real monster trucks). Excessive use can over heat the engine, but that won’t slow you down. It only prevents you from using the speed boost for a few seconds. The tracks are littered with objects that are destructible, but most of these things will send you bouncing in random directions. Other times, you can get hit by an opponent and get stuck to the front of their truck resulting in you being dragged around the track for several seconds with no way to get free. Almost everything on a track is destructible, which is a blast to play around with. I found myself aiming for things that aren’t right in front of me just to see what happens. The only problem with this is that the marker for the finish line is also destructible and is usually destroyed in the first couple laps. This makes it difficult to know exactly where the line is at the end of a race. For a while, I actually thought there was no finish line until I learned to look for the broken pieces of the the sign that was above us at the beginning of the race. There also isn’t much variety in the tracks. There are five championships, but each consists of only one track with slight variations.
Progress through the game isn’t based on winning races, but on earning points by destroying objects and performing stunts. Items are unlocked at set amounts of points. At first, only new trucks are unlocked. This becomes fairly pointless once you realize that every truck handles the same and the world’s most popular truck, Gravedigger, is available right off the bat. Much later in the game, movies of monster trucks in action are unlocked. These are cool, but it isn’t anything you can’t find on YouTube. Aside from earning achievement points on the Xbox 360, there isn’t really any reason to actually win races. The next event is unlocked by placing higher than third. In the case of the head to head drag races, losing means second place, which is high enough to unlock the next event.
There are several different race types that try and keep your attention. Of course, there are the basic races with a set number of laps. Eliminator is similar to lap races with last place being eliminated at the end of each lap. I really didn’t see much difference between the Stadium Circuit and Stadium Racing. Both were similar to the real life drag races but are a little longer and have more stunts during the race. The Freestyle are the main draw. Just like the real events, you have a set amount of time to perform as many stunts as possible. The damage modeling during these events is a little more realistic. Pieces of your truck will fly off and if you are too rough, you can actually loose a few wheels. The game says the event will end early if you come to a stop while overturned, but my truck always had the magical ability to somehow always roll back over. Not only are the freestyle events the most fun, they also provide you with the most points to unlock other trucks. The total lack of a replay option is incredibly disappointing, especially in the case of freestyle.
The graphics aren’t particularly good, but they did grow on me after a while. The trucks look pretty good and are fun to watch. They collect mud during the race that looks really cool. Panels fall off and expose the roll bar underneath. During particularly brutal races, all that will be left of the truck is the roll bar with the driver fully exposed. The action moves a little too quickly to really feel realistic. The tracks look alright, but aren’t great. A lot of the objects are repeated over and over. The destruction looks good, but I would have expected more debris effects from a game involving monster trucks.
The game is simply OK. There isn’t very much variety to it (and no variety between the trucks at all) but is still fun to play. It can be frustrating at times and wins can come down to lucky breaks. Monster truck fans will get a kick out of it, but for anyone else, there are too many far better racing games available to warrant a purchase on this one.
After the writing of this review, the PC version came out and is priced at $29.99. The game plays basically the same but the graphics look sharper. This is definitely a budget game and is appropriately priced on the PC. This makes it more ridiculous that the are still charging $49.99 for the console versions.
ABOUT THIS AUTHOR
To whomever wrote the above, can you tell me how to do stunts liek it says to do to gain more points? I bought this game for my son (who is only 5) who loves teh trucks but wants to be able to play and we wre highly disappointed to find nearly all teh trucks locked so we are trying to unlock as many as we can.
You never did say what console you were playing this game on, or if it was on the PC. It does make a difference, at least for most games.
The stunts are performed simply by hitting objects or jumps. You get more points for doing these things close together without too much time between.
I played it on Xbox 360. The PC version that came out shortly after the 360 one looks like it has sharper graphics.
We are playing on PC. We try and try to hit all of the jumps, etc but cannot figure out how to do donuts or wheelies. We almost always land in 6thplace and our stunt number is always low. I just thought there was some trick to it. Any words of advise??? We can use all we can get…my 5 yr old just wants to play for fun…it was kind of a bummer for him to learn all teh trucks were locked so my husband and I are tryign to get them all unlocked!!!
The wheelies are done by hitting the gas as soon as you land a jump. The timing can be a little picky so it can be hard to do. The donuts are done by holding the ’4 wheel steering’ button while turning and holding down the gas. I’m not sure which button that would be on the PC version.
OK, the wheelies I think I get….tested them and I think I can get soem of them but I tried hitting the Accelerate and turn arrow plus every other key on my keyboard to do donuts and nothing worked. There is aboslutely nothing in the instructions about 4 wheel driving. I have tried to email teh company (Torrus and Activision) and neither have replied to me…any other suggestions on where I would find out instructions? I do really apprecaite you helping me…you have helped out a lot, thanks.
We hunted around on the internet for a list of the controls for the game but couldn’t find anything for any system. Hopefully Torrus or Activision will get back to you by tomorrow. They probably won’t today because of the holiday. I found the donuts difficult to use because my points multiplier would expire before I had a chance to get one going. I just tried to use the wheelie to make it from one jump or pile of cars to the next in order to keep the multiplier up. As long as you keep your speed up and hit everything in the freestyle arena, you should be able to get good scores after some practice.
Four wheel steering should be the LEFT SHIFT button.
Turbo is LEFT CONTROL.
Change camera is Z.
Have fun
Oh my gosh, thank you sooooo much….the Left shift worked!! I tried every key but apparently I didnt hold it down long enough. You have made a world of difference. my son is inthere now doing donuts!!!So are there any other hints or short cut keys I can know about? We made it as far as to unlock Predator tonight…..that is it so far. Thank you Thank you, I truly appreciate it.
Does anyone know if the PC version supports the use of a steering wheel?
Also, does anyone know how to play this game on the wii, I suppose with the wii controller? I won tickets to the Monster Jam in Houston a couple of days ago and I have to compete against 3 other contestants in Monster Jam on the wii. If I win I get to go to Las Vegas for the finals! If anyone can give me any tips on the wii before January 5th I would really appreciate it.
I am playing PC also. have 550,000 points and still have 8 trucks yet to unlock. Have finished 1st on all Outdoor tracks but fail badly in Freestyle. Are there other stunts/tips/tricks than wheelies and donuts?
Thank you so much for the Left Shift = Donut tip. That is not mentioned in the PC insert, and I too have spent way too long trying to figure out how to donut in PC.
Next question: On the PC box it says, boldly, “Split Screen!” HOW, pray tell, can we play split screen on the PC?!!??? That’s really why I bought it! $50,000 to the first one who can tell me how! (*)
Well we finally figured out how to do donuts on the PC game- you hold down the left shift button, forward arrow and left arrow. Great for getting monster points. To do the power boost you hit the left control button while moving forward. This is good for the offroad courses to push by the other trucks. Supposedly if you hit it right after a jump you can do a wheelie but the only wheelies we have done have been accidental during freestyle. Does anyone know of any other stunts that can be done?
Activitision has a patch out for the PC version that lets you configure the controls (and therefore shows you the correct controls). FYI – you need to launch it from the configure program if you make any changes.
I too am playing it primarily for my 4-year old who just wants more trucks. I’m sure the codes exist to unlock them all I just haven’t been able to find them.
Yep, another one here with a 4 year old, looking to unlock trucks and tracks! I’ve gotten wheelies (randomly by “boosting”) and donuts, but there are no other tricks in the game? That seems odd. I always get perfect scores for time use and obstacle use, but I can’t get more than 50% of the max score for stunts and variations. The instructions are HORRIBLE! And there is no support anywhere….I’m so disappointed, because we really like the game…
Im useing a micosoft force feedback wheel, thru it’s software, you can use the wheel and program the buttons on the wheel, which makes it easy to drive and do tricks. Thx for the lft shift advise, works good.
does anyone know how to perform do-nuts / cyclones using a wii controller?Thanks
on the las vegas finals on freestyle i can only manage to get 37 points. everything is perfect apart from my stunt variation, i do wheelies and donuts etc. but still only manage to get 7/10 are there any other stunts im missing???
I installed this game on my nephews laptop for him and it won’t run. It comes up with the error of not a supported video card, but it shows that there is no video card at all that it can find. The laptop is new. A Compaq Presario 727US with Windows Vista (I did download and install the patch for it crashing at startup which we did experience before this) How do I get around the video card error so he can play?
im the same for the vegas freestyle, i got 100k points and got a whopping 2nd place!?!??! i can do wheelies, doughnuts and so forth but it always tells me that like 7/10 in stunt variation. what else is there besides the aforementioned, jumps and smash combos?
Was anyone able to help Lethana with the question. I’m having th same problem and it won’t recognoze my video card either. It does on other game but just nor this one. I would appreciate any help anyone can give
Same boat as many it seems! My 5 year old loves monster jam on the wii but we cant unlock past captains curse cause stunts & stunt variation score..please help cant figure out what to do?
Hello all, father of 3 and 5 year old boys here. First thing I did was download the Activision patch and use a Logitech “rumblepad” which makes driving (and stunts) far easier for kids – and old folks, too.
Believe it or not, there’s a great game from 2002 (Ubisoft) called Monster Jam also, likewise for PC, and it’s sad to see that for all the years passing, this game has major flaws: no truck differences I can tell aside from body skins, nothing very “violent” (2002 edition has flamethrowers and missiles in some modes, plus far more vehicles total), and the engine noise is awful, sound like (and handle a bit like) R/C cars! Engines and truck variation are perfect for long-term enjoyment in the 2002 game; what the blazes were they doing with this edition? Had hopes more correct engine sounds would be in the Activision patch, but no. Patch is worth it for resolution and aliasing controls, highly recommend it for that if nothing else.
Enough whining, here’s some tips:
Those who want to unlock vehicles. You must get first place in all events for a given “area” to unlock most of the trucks (example: first place in all of Coastal or Southern). The rest are points-based. The points gave me fits, things like the stadium races giving 300-500 points. You can, on the PC, replay however, without goofing your “place” from an earlier run – so once you hit 1st (or 2-3 spot though again note unlocking trucks means first), go back and run the same race, but just treat it like one great big freestyle, donuts and airtime and linking crushes and smashes until you get 50-100k for a race you spent 20 minutes losing. Lame but kids tend to enjoy roaming all over destroying everything they see, I let them do it.
For you struggling freestylers out there, the key is “linking” which in short means, lay off your nitrous enough to have extra without blowing your engine. Contrary to common sense, don’t use it at the last minute to jump cars, etc – use it to get from one place to another, and for “air” – using it immediately after you come down from a jump, supposing for once you are not pointing into a wall and have some space, like a real truck, hit the NOS and leave it down when you see the shocks springing up naturally from your bounce-back of the initial jump. It doesn’t work 100% but with some practice it works enough to keep enough “linking” multipliers to raise scores significantly. The links (watch for the x2, x5, etc multipliers where mini-scores show) help you gain huge points, another tip is to do a little smash, little crash, etc – then once you have a big multiplier built-up, go for the whole rack of houses or boxes or whatever and boom, 10k points in a heartbeat. I was able to get a multiplier of 13x going in the finals and scored a 40 the first run, lucky me. Note that the “same stunt” can be a multiplier when not used consecutively, so for example, crush-smash-crush gives a 3x even though you crushed twice in there. Airtime often leads to the slap-wheelie and if you land turning, donut links, and watch for the “big stuff” often in the middle as this is another stunt type called “monster” that doesn’t do much alone, but will give big points if you build a multiplier first.
For the laptop video card problems please note this game is ridiculously bad about detecting GPU (video card) power. I initially installed it on a Dell laptop that runs 2 external monitors at 1920×1200 each and can play anything else on the market, games with far more (real) system requirements. But as others with laptops have said, no dice, no video card to select. So I installed it on my much older single-core, single-GPU desktop rig and no problem (except full-tine 100% CPU usage crashes the entire system every 10-15 minutes, sigh). If there’s a video workaround I haven’t figured it out yet.
And yes I am lame for writing this much. Love my kids though, and hopefully this helps some of you spend time with yours. See a bargain bin near you for a PC edition of this game; cheers.
My 4yo likes the game, but we too were frustrated by not getting all of the trucks. Here’s the codes for Unlocking. Go to the Options menu, then click Credits. Once the credits start rolling, key these sequences. The L, U, R, and D are the arrow keys:
DRUULD – all trucks
DRUULR – all movies
DRUULU – all tracks
DRUULL – trophies
You’ll hear a sound after each sequence is acknowledged.
Ok there are 3 tricks that i know of on wii i know how to do a wheelie and cyclone/do-nut wat ever you want to call it but i cant figure out how to do a BARREL ROLL i beleive that is the last trick it freestyle beacause of those jumps that are curved now that you know this is the trick try to get it and tell me how if you figure it out KTHX BAI PPL