Monster Jam is a new form of a sports event displayed in the US which show Monster Trucks in stadiums and arenas performing stunts and mini races, and now a game has been made which adopts the same name and takes the setting to the consoles. Obviously for all the younger ambitious Monster Truck lovers wanting to experience the mayhem early, but this time, not in the most realistic of fashions. This game takes many well known Monster Trucks and a few based upon settings, it also takes the basic idea of Monster Truck stunt events, like Monster Jam, but instead of designing a game where you'd be given a taste of the real action, they've designed the game from what a child may think Monster Trucks would be like. I suppose it's so it can be more involving for a wider audience. At least that's what I've hoped they'd have in mind. The game is developed by Torus Games and published by the well known Activision. Torus Games has been known previously to design and port games for the handhelds, although they have designed a number of games for the Play station 2, Wii PC and Xbox. This would be their first game for the Xbox 360.

Gameplay:

To start off with, the menu presents you with a number of gameplay options, and these consist of; Single events, Championship, Multiplayer, although no support for Xbox live, unusual and unfortunate. These then split up into an array of other options, from the single event there are several smaller stunt/race variants. Championship has the option of five championships, each championship are a mix of five races and four arena tracks, only three of the championships are unlocked to start with. And then Multiplayer which has four stunt/race variants to choose from, up to four players may play on one console, but there is no system link either. We obviously have the options menu; from here they allow you to control the difficulty settings, which are chosen between normal and pro. The options also allow you to view your records, records which show you your times for every circuit, and even random records for the amount of wheels are lost or where your engine has overheated. There's also a controls option, however, all you can choose here is whether you want the controller to vibrate or not, you have no say in manipulating any of the buttons, no buttons sets even, which is very disappointing, and you'll find out why later. There are a many of circuits & monster trucks to choose from, the majority though are locked, and you must unlock these by completing tournaments and finishing races and stunt arenas with good scores, this is where you'll later realise where most of the gameplay elevates from. Now, talking about the game itself, the controls don't compare to any of your ordinary racers. To be honest they don't even compare to the driving in GTA, GTA III that is. They are extremely basic and "arcadey" ,to the sense of stupidity. When you move the left analogue stick you will be able to do a 360 degree turn at full speed, without rolling over. I'm assuming they (Torus Games) were aiming for the fun of crushing cars, destroying barricades and smashing other miscellaneous objects instead of concentrating on driving skills and realistic car controls, but not being able orientate the camera at all is pretty god damn awful. You will find yourself on a number of occasions crashing into objects of the variety, even when you don't want to, just because you can't see where you're turning. That doesn't matter though, because this Monster Truck can mow down anything. The sensitivity of the monster trucks makes driving the vehicles seem like an illusion, it's almost like there's a radio controlled car underneath those behemoth beasts, it's completely ridiculous. And then when you're making jumps, there's no weight to the vehicles, take note that these are monster trucks and rarely lift off the ground anyway, but when they do they should hit the ground like an anvil. I could be here for quite a while talking about the clumsy controls, but to put it simply, they're pretty much useless. Now onto everything but the vehicle you control. Much of the gameplay has you racing into signs, buildings and on top of cars, hitting these give you points, points which will be added to your record later. Hitting things also adds to your boost meter, which all Monster Trucks have of course. Crushing inanimate objects is second nature to racing in this game, and it saves the game from being a complete lackluster. When you hurtle over a series of unwanted cars there comes some satisfaction, it may slow you down, and you may end up losing the race because of it, but it is worth it. Doing this is when the vibration really kicks in, and you actually feel like your controlling a monster truck, for a short while at least. It just becomes a tad silly when you knock down full blown water towers and trees yet still go at full pelt. Damage is also shown on your vehicles; too many wrong turns into concrete walls will take its toll, and it does look kind of cool, even if its a little strange driving with only two wheels. I ended up losing both of my front wheels and I had to drive backwards for the rest of the race, bizarre, but it was particularly funny. The games are relatively short, on average they last about four minutes. Thinking about it though, this is quite realistic in length, if you've ever switched over to one of the American extreme sports channels, I'm sure everyone has caught a glimpse of it, the rally cars, dirt bikes and monster trucks racing it out or performing spectacular stunts, generally in a relatively small arena. This is similar to that, although mixing the racing with the spectacular stunts this time around. Instead of playing just a couple of races in this game, you'll probably end up playing a whole tournament/championship in a go, that's how quick it is. Racing is the theme for the majority of the modes and circuits, but the theme of the game, or, the sense of enjoyment seems to be earning the points. Earning the points from stunts, and winning races, points which get added to that record and are compared to random AI competitors. Hitting certain targets will unlock trucks, circuits, modes and of course achievements. The game itself however, without being too blunt, is very dull and behind its time. Even with arcade type orientated games, there needs to be something about the game which has a sense of realism, or, immersion to make you come back for more. All this has is the amount of ways you can score points for your leaderboard placements, which normally has you crushing things. Monster Jam can become quite stale quite fast, I was impressed with the amount of modes it had to offer, but after playing all of them, they were pretty much the same. The general idea of the whole game is to bump yourself up in the leaderboard, and you just do this by racing, beating best times, or scoring destruction points. Okay, that's the general idea of racing games as a whole, but because the games mechanics are so simple anyway (the controls, the courses & customization options) you will find that there isn't much to the game at all.

Graphics:

What you have to keep in mind here is that this is nowhere near a triple A title and that you can't, or shouldn't, compare it to, games such as Burnout Paradise. The budget provided and the resources obtained would be nowhere near the size of a company like EA, so beating around about the graphics can only go so far. Having said that, this game isn't at all special visually, and you will look at the game and think this should be on the original Xbox . When I think about graphics, I think about visuals, and when I think about visuals, I also think about artistic detail. There is none of this. The theme maybe slightly cartoony with some of its bright solid colours, and this would probably suit the younger audience who wouldn\rquote t normally appreciate the artistic side of gaming, but surely if you want to aim it at a wider audience you would provide some sort of eye candy. The textures are all very much simplistic in detail, there\rquote s no bump mapping to be found here and the particle and texture effects are minimalistic. It's not only bland in concept, but it's also quite bland to look at. All the objects that you run over seem to explode in blocks, almost like broken toys. This destruction and the damage detail of your truck is quite fun to play with, although a little bit too reliant on this sometimes. Like I had mentioned before, your truck can take damage by losing wheels and parts of its body, although this doesn't seem to caution you when playing at all. It's not a horrible game to look at, it's just nowhere near the standards we expect from a next generation title, the graphics do tend to suit its lacking gameplay. But maybe the approach of this game was to prove that simple can be fun. Games such a LEGO Star Wars has proved this.

Sound:

The developers have thought about the music for this game, and I think they found that rock music was the way to go here. The in menu heavy rock/metal track might be something to nod your head to, it tends to be the obvious approach to anything where there's a lot of destruction and carnage, this I feel makes it cheesy. But nonetheless, I see the reasoning. You'll find the heavy rock theme throughout the game, and there is some okay stuff here, but it is a repetitive soundtrack and that music volume bar will become very attractive sooner or later. Monster Jam has next to no atmosphere to it, when you're not racing alongside other trucks or smashing the hell out of everything, you'll hear nothing but the light hum of your engine. Of course there's music, but I mean ambiance here, a bit of life except what you're driving and driving through other things. Crashing into pretty much everything will be a big part of the game, and it is quite exciting, for the first three or four races, the destructibility does become a little underwhelming and a bit easy, so the sound effects will also become tedious on the ears. And like all arcade, off road focused racing games there's a commentator with an attitude, this one, thankfully, doesn't speak very much at least not when you're racing. Although when you're playing a tournament arena he speaks at every type of stunt and destruction type, this tended to keep me away from those modes. After saying that though, the highlight of the audio comes from the different types of crashes and smashes you get from ramming trucks and conveniently placed objects, even if it does become a chore in the end. It's all extremely over the top and sometimes unrealistic to the type of item you're crushing, but all the more satisfying to do.

Longevity:

There's huge amount of content here, I can tell they were trying to make up for the lack of online multiplayer support (which is sadly pretty much a standard now) but of course you can't make up for LIVE support as it's potentially limitless, with the ability of download content, which is also becoming a standard now. Problems stem from the issues mentioned before, there may be a lot of modes and circuits to pick from here, it's just the core elements of the gameplay itself which have the gaps. Races are a little short, and, are a little too easy to win. But the AI is relatively smart, they will ram you and increase/decrease speeds dependent on certain situations, this adds to the replay-ability slightly. It's also worth noting that there are a lot of circuits to play in, which may make up for the shortened tracks. The contrasted gameplay modes in the tournament make for some interesting games, switching between the arena and the races may be the best choice of action in this game.

Overall:

Upon first sight, and play, this game can be judged quite easily as a bog standard, mediocre, racing frenzy game, any excuse for a bit of chaos. But if you can excuse the poor and overly arcade handling of the monster trucks, look past the stale and outdated graphics, and get over the lack of Xbox LIVE support, this game can be very enjoyable for the younger generation and even for the mature and older adults if you want to smash the hell out of everything, and I mean everything.