Monster Jam™ Showdown Big Trucks, Bigger Chaos

This is a game about the machines first. Grave Digger, El Toro Loco, Megalodon and dozens more fill the roster, from the current fleet to legendary history-makers and wild fictional beasts from the toy universe. Each truck can be dressed in different liveries, and there are countless of them to collect: some unlock by winning events with a specific truck, others through challenges. You feel the weight of these things too. The suspension works, the trucks lean and tip, and with assists off you have to keep a heavy machine under control or it will flip. Pick your favorite, earn a new skin for it, and the collection grows from there.

The racing is pure arcade. You squeeze the boost to demolish your opponents, and here is the trick: crashing through the environment gives you even more power. So the fastest line is often straight through the stuff meant to be scenery. One moment you are pinned sideways in a drift, the next you land a jump flat and lose half your speed. The tracks reward commitment, with multiple routes and hidden shortcuts on the outdoor courses. Weather shakes things up too: sandstorms in Death Valley, thunderstorms in the forests, blizzards on the Alaskan ice, and the wind genuinely shoves your truck around in heavy rain.

Racing is only half of it. In freestyle you balance the perfect wheelie, chew dirt doing crisp donuts, and launch into big air contests where flips and stunts stack into a combo. The stunt system counts variety, not just height: riding on two wheels, driving in reverse, drifting and spinning all score differently, so a good run is a juggling act of tricks chained together. Land clean and the combo keeps building; tip over and it ends. It takes a few runs to read how the trucks behave in the air, but once a backflip sticks, chasing your own leaderboard score becomes the whole evening.

Nothing tests a friendship like a Figure 8 track with two trucks on one screen. Split screen is built in, so you can race, crash and trade paint with someone on the same couch, no lobby required. The physics are loose enough that every race produces at least one moment worth arguing about: a truck launched by a bump, a lead lost on the final jump. Online there are Treasure Hunt and Survival challenges to destroy opponents in, plus the full set of race and stunt modes. It is easy to hand a controller to anyone: turn the assists up and the game does most of the driving for them.