Monster Jam has been around for a long time; there's an inherent charm to seeing monster trucks do stunts and crush stuff. There have been games based on the events, but each one has done something way different, from an open-world racer to vehicular combat. Monster Jam Showdown moves the series back to something more traditional, and it mostly works.

The Showdown Tour is the main gameplay mode, and it consists of you selecting a truck and participating in one of three different event types of your choosing. These are standard eight-player races, and while there are actual tracks, some are a little more open in that you can veer off course so long as you hit the necessary checkpoint markers. The racing is more arcade in nature, so you'll gain turbo boosts over time. Destruction is highly encouraged, as there are always several targets in the road that are waiting to get smashed.

The actual racing is generally enjoyable. This is thanks in part to the vehicle controls, which aren't overly complicated. There is the ability to independently control your back set of wheels, but it mainly acts as a handbrake system of sorts in that you can steer left or right, and your truck will sharply turn in that direction; you might as well call it drifting. It's easy to use and a little tough to master, but it remains something you'll use often with great results.

There are two parts to the racing experience that drag down things, however. The first is the fact that you can get stuck behind your opponent for a majority of the race. Due to the size of everyone's wheels, you're almost always guaranteed to get one of your front wheels wedged to the side and back of your opponent's wheel, causing you to practically get magnetized to the opposition until you either slow down or your opponent turns in a direction so you can finally free yourself. It happens in almost every race and quickly becomes an annoyance.

The second aspect has to do with the overall physics. While the game is mostly well behaved in that you don't find yourself spinning out at random moments or find that you'll be violently flung somewhere when you get hit, you'll notice that bumping into non-destructible objects wreaks havoc on you. Making the tiniest bump to a rock wall can suddenly flip you over. Brushing across some low walls causes your vehicle to stop. None of this happens when you hit a truck in motion, and the result of these bumps can range wildly, from temporarily losing a few places to falling into last place with no hope of catching up. The restart option loads quickly enough that the process of starting over isn't overly painful, but it is annoying nonetheless.

The second type of event you'll participate in are stadium races, which is exactly what you'd see if you were to go to an actual Monster Jam show. This is a one-on-one race where each opponent is given their own track to race in. Sometimes the tracks intersect one another, but for the most part, you'll rarely see anyone but yourself. The objective remains the same in that you need to cross the finish line before your opponent does, but this is done tournament style, where you'll need to take on three different opponents in elimination rounds before taking home the event trophy.

Alas, these are boring. The tracks are short to the point where one minute is the average amount of time you'd need to spend on any of the courses before moving on. The track layouts never change during any of these events, and it is only when you reach the higher difficulty levels that you feel like the opponent is trying to win. It's nice to see a real Monster Jam pop up, but you likely won't want to spend a lot of time replaying these tracks.

Lastly, there's the freestyle mode, which is a ton of fun. You're given around two and a half minutes to go around the stadium and use the various structures and dirt ramps to pull off stunts like big jumps, stoppies, and wheelies. The truck handling makes it easy to pull off the tricks, and while there are tricks that gain bonus points, there really isn't a strict playlist of tricks that you have to hit to score on the leaderboard. What elevates it from its Tony Hawk's Pro Skater inspiration is that your combo meter never breaks, so even if you manually respawn after a failed donut attempt, you'll still maintain your combo chain until time expires. Its kinder to younger players in this regard, and it's enjoyable enough to ensure tons of replay value.

The overall quality of the events is hit-and-miss, and that extends to the Showdown Tour. The game features plenty of different individual events, and although most of them are initially locked, enough events are unlocked at a time that you can dictate the order in which you want to take on the events. The number of environments you can tackle is limited to three states, and there are only four environments in each of them, so you'll see some of the same track layouts quite often in your journey. It takes a while before you start unlocking different trucks, and the result is also hit-and-miss. On the one hand, the truck choices are purely cosmetic so the only reason to change your truck is to go after the various unlocks associated with each. On the other hand, you won't be stuck driving a truck with terrible stats if you're a completionist.

As for the multiplayer, two-player, split-screen play is available for all of the events, and all of the tracks and stadiums are ready from the get-go. When you consider how there are rarely any racing games that feature local multiplayer (kart racers excluded), it's a nice bonus to have it in Monster Jam Showdown. Online multiplayer contains the same features, but we weren't able to test out the performance during the review period. Keep in mind that while there's no cross-platform play, the game comes with an executable to the Epic Games Store to ensure cross-play between Epic and Steam.

There is one PC-specific issue that is a tad confounding. For some reason, having Steam Input enabled completely kills any gamepad controls. It also completely kills gamepad controls for every program from Steam Big Picture mode to other games and apps with native gamepad support. This doesn't happen with most other games on Steam, so the hope is that this bug gets fixed soon, considering its pervasiveness .

Graphically, Monster Jam Showdown looks quite nice. The trucks are rendered nicely, and while it may be difficult to see the details on the paint jobs, you can see dirt and snow accumulate on the tires over time, and you can break apart some of the trucks to the point where all you'll see is the engine and roll cage. The environments are limited since you only have three racing locales, but they still look good, especially if you're racing in a storm. The game runs at a good frame rate no matter what's happening on-screen, and while HDR support is in, you can't fine-tune the brightness. The game also doesn't support ultrawide monitors well. Even though it will appear to fill up the screen, it is stretched out, and map navigation is almost impossible since you can't correctly target each map icon.

As far as sound goes, things aren't so polished. This is mainly due to the announcer, who has a small pool of lines to work with and often gets them cut off during each track introduction. His delivery is fine, though. The music features instrumental tracks from all sorts of genres, but you'll only hear them in the menus as the engine sounds are the only thing accompanying your races and events. Speaking of which, the engine sounds for these large machines are appropriately loud and booming.

The unfortunate news for Steam Deck users is that the game will not run on the device. You will be able to get to the company logo and to the warning about save files, but the game stops with an error message about "Unknown File Version _CRC_SHA1.json." This is with the game's default Proton setting, and changing it to either Experimental or GE-Proton 9-11 doesn't fix the issue. For now, monster truck fans will have to wait until an official fix has been made or some confirmation that the game wasn't intended to work on the Deck.

Monster Jam Showdown is a title for the fans who aren't so critical of their games. Performing stunts is undoubtedly fun, but the stadium events are boring even though they mimic what you'd see in a Monster Jam event. The races are enjoyable until you get stuck behind a truck or crash into a rock wall and spin around unrealistically. The number of available events makes for a lengthy single-player mode, while multiplayer is a good addition. Young players enamored with monster trucks will enjoy this title the most, while all other racing fans should approach it with the above caveats in mind.

Score: 6.5/10