Monster Truck Championship

I purchased this on sale for about $7. Reviews made me think I wouldnt like it.
Color me shocked when I found out this game is a hidden gem.
This game is setup like older NASCAR games, or DIRT 4, etc where you build your vehicles, team, sponsors etc. Except its done with monster trucks. Theres a ton of variety in how to play, its not completely linear so you dont feel railroaded (think GT4). Lots of options for how to build your trucks. Bodies, paint, engines, and details like painting chassis components, flags, etc. You can hire different eginers and mechanics that give you X or Y bonus, etc.
I like that thers not a huge focus on the "goofy" monster truck bodies, instead giving you lots of options. You can make a serious build or a wacky looking one, as long as youve unlocked the parts.
I dont understand the physics complaints. There is a bit of twitchiness, but its easily managed, and mstly goes away with the first set of upgraded tires. There are a TON of settings to adjust controls as well.
Crashing/impacts also feels good. The trucks crumble and fall apart, obstacles like railers and barriers disintegrate. Cars crush realistically. Your truck also has a detailed mechanical damage model, which is of course subject to your build and engineers.
Lots of small details enchance the experience. Dust whiping around tires, filling the air, fireworks going off, etc.
Overall id give this an 8/10. Solid content, A lot of fun

Fantastic monster truck game. Would classify it as a forgiving sim, rather than an over-the-top arcade. The physics are fine idk what other reviewers are on about.

Decent racing game but would be nice to have more race tracks, career is finished in 7 to 8 hours.

This game has it where it counts--the truck physics are great, and it's tons of fun to perform stunts. All of the freestyle tricks are fairly easy to learn, and a joy to pull off. Everything you see on actual Monster Jam can be done here.

The gameplay loop is short and simple: win races, do stunts, get money, upgrade truck, repeat. That's it. But that's okay. I wasn't expecting some robust, open world to lose myself in for hundreds or thousands of hours, and neither should you. This isn't GTA or something. But it doesn't need to be. Don't expect too much from it. It's more of toy to goof around with. I use it as something to goof around with while I'm waiting for my friends to arrive to play whatever serious game we're working on. It's perfect for that purpose. I bought this purely to do freestyle stunts, and for that it totally delivers and then some.

It's satisfyingly challenging without being overly frustrating. Not grindy. The easy difficulty allows you to blow past competition, which I like because I wasn't looking for extreme challenge with this. I just wanted to do backflips. ;)

Tons of truck customization options. The cosmetic options are so much fun. I made Grave Digger. They very obviously let players make Grave Digger as closely as possible without copyright infringement. :D

I have only one criticism--they should have let you save several truck appearance loadouts. You can make so many gorgeous, awesome looking trucks, but if you want to change your appearance, you have to just change everything manually. I want to customize a truck, then save it to a loadout slot, and have, say, six loadouts that I can toggle between with one click so I can switch between multiple trucks. I don't care if it costs in-game money. That's fine. I really wish they had included that. It would have been so easy to do, and would have made it perfect.

Anyway, still great, and I recommend it. The game is narrow in scope, but highly polished. All the reviews I watched placed this above the licensed Steel Titans franchise. The best part is no DRM, no accounts, no 3rd party software, no in-game store, no monetization, no BS, no f****** BattlEye garbage. Just your game, and that's it. which is just the breath of fresh air I needed after the anti-cheat travesty that ruined GTA online for me.

My son and I are enjoying it. It really is a spiritual successor in my eyes to the Microsoft Monster Truck Madness.

The game is pretty decent, I played Monster Jam: Showdown before this, it's still Arcade-like in comparison but I find it a bit better in terms of graphics and realism. To me, the game gives a mid 90's early 2000s feel for Monster Trucks, and it feels kind of refreshing from the normal Monster Jam games where the physics are super arcade-like for kids sake; and where air-rolling is possible. (I had a huge distaste to air-rolling in the Monster Jam games I've played.)
For starters, you have some flexibility to customization; from decoration to performance. Decoration available mainly with the body work and paint-jobs of the body, frame, wheels, etc; excluding stickers, you also have upgrades you can unlock from doing sponsorships, completing event stages which give more power and durability to the truck, and are able to tune a monster truck to your desire.
Controlling the throttle and steering is decent, making wheelies and stunts a nice feel to it. The damage model is a nice addition as well, as doing some stunts can be seriously demanding on the truck, and can affect the rest of your experience in the current event stage if major damage has occurred; still haven't had a wheel fall off though..
The issues I have are stated below.
- When on the sidewalls, the body does not touch the ground whatsoever, so a true roll-over cannot occur, where usually a truck roll-over on to its side is the most vulnerable a monster truck can get when any rolling occurs period. The hitbox takes out a huge punishing factor of requiring true control of a monster truck.
- Wheelie control is mint, but if you are upright vertically on the back wheels and the tailgate breaks, you are essentially stuck in that position, as driving forward will throw you onto your roof (which I see as realistic), while reversing only glides you backwards, the back wheels seem way under-powered and it's not enough to throw the truck forward, so the truck glides backwards until you inevitably hit an obstacle and then there the truck is thrown aggressively on its roof
- Slap Wheelies are not possible, after making a jump with the front end landing first, the trucks just sticks to the ground. The suspension is very stiff after hitting the ground, and the truck does not bounce as it should realistically.
- In the Racing events especially; when tarmac is present, the truck gives an insane amount of grip, most notably at higher speeds where some sliding should occur.
- The game is mostly rinse and repeat, once you play a track a few times over throughout different events, it becomes a breeze and not necessarily a challenge, but you get that with these sorts of games.
- The response in steering compared to Monster Jam: Showdown is a bit more finnecky, but might just be requiring some personal fine-tuning to the thumb-sticks.
Long Story Short, the game is decent, 53AUD is a bit costly but I got it on sale, personally I'd say it's better than the Monster Jam games in terms of physics and customization, but it doesn't have as much content as a Monster Jam game, and isn't as simple in terms of control, most noticeably compared to Monster Jam: Showdown; my previous Monster Truck experience.

i personally have been having alot of fun on this game the rear steer being on the right stick adds a whole different level to racing and once youget some upgrades unlocked the trucks are actually rather beasty :) biggest downside is just that the trucks arent licensed otherwise really fun and enjoyable driving sim game and i highly recommend trying this one out if you enjoy trucks, racing because in my opinion this game is a nice change from the normal racing/driving games!