Monster Truck Madness

You can keep your racing cars, motorbikes and hovering spacecraft-type vehicles. If you want to really experience serious racing thrills, you need to put yourself behind the wheel of a car-crushing monster truck. At least that’s what Take 2 would have us believe with their latest N64 offering, Monster Truck Madness.

Offering you a choice of no fewer than 19 different vehicles to choose from, including the world-renowned BIGFOOT, Monster Truck Madness lets you test your driving skills on ten different tracks, each one more huge and convoluted than the last. Where this game differs from other racers is in the way you race. Rather than simply have you following a set course, progress through the game is via a series of checkpoints. The twist is that it doesn’t matter how you get to them, just that you get there. So while you could simply follow the clearly-marked tracks round to each point, you’re encouraged to instead take the odd shortcut or four. Your truck can drive almost anywhere on the map, including up the side of near-vertical hills and through deep water, so the choice of route is limited only by your imagination.

Monster Truck Sadness

In addition to being able to travel off-road, your truck can collect a number of different power-ups. These include homing missiles which blast competitors into the air, a shield which protects you from collisions and sends opponents flying, a spring which launches your truck upwards allowing you to quite literally leap tall buildings in a single bound, and a hover power-up which converts your vehicle into a flying machine.

With the range of trucks, tracks and weird power-ups this game has huge potential and it is extremely good fun... to begin with. The problem is that there are a number of annoying glitches which really start to get irritating as you play through the game. Most notably, the CPU trucks cheat like anything! The only rule of the game is that you have to hit each checkpoint in order, but sadly this doesn’t apply to your opponents. While they race around the track quite happily to begin with if you use one of the power-ups, things start to go wrong. Blast a truck ahead of you and it carries on without bothering to hit any checkpoints it’s missed!

Monstrous Bugs

Another problem with the game is the truck handling and the general game physics. The vehicles handle strangely, turning very sluggishly at times. As far as collisions go, while sometimes they are fairly realistic and you can crunch and grind away at the other trucks with aplomb, sometimes just the smallest nudge can send you sailing off the track. Which brings up the collision detection. Sometimes you can clip through huge objects, while at other times you get stopped by an object despite there clearly being considerable space between it and you.

As you progress, the weather conditions on the tracks change and your truck’s handling gets worse as a result – a wet track, for instance, makes cornering much more difficult. However, the worsening track conditions don’t seem to affect the CPU trucks – in fact, they get faster and more agile with each race, able to take corners at speed while your truck can only crawl around. Come on guys, play fair! Monster Truck Madness is not a bad game; in fact it’s addictive in one-player with some pretty innovative multiplayer games. Unfortunately, it’s spoiled by glitches and bugs which should have been sorted out before the game was released. It’s still worth giving this one a look, but don’t expect perfection.

Monster Truck Madness is a pocket full of hardcore truck racing fun. Sure, we're not talking high-res ultra realistic racing, but MTM is the most entertaining racing gaming for the GBA I've ever played.

THQ has published a game that manages to capture the full-realism of 3D driving on a handheld device without having to make the graphics small and jagged. Gameplay is pretty straightforward'you can choose between a quick Instant Action game, a Time Attack or the Race modes. The Race mode is basically a mini career game that has you racing through 30 tracks on a variety of difficulty settings. The tracks are a combination of fictional outdoor tracks, rallies and indoor arena races.

Players get to race ten different Monster Trucks including famous big wheelers like Grave Digger and Carolina Crusher.
The trucks seem to handle like they should, with the proper amount of unwieldy turning and bounce. And the tracks themselves are designed to really show that off, with plenty of big jumps and hairpin turns.

The controls are pretty straightforward with just your gas and brake buttons, your D-pad for directional control, and of course, your car horn and Ya-hoo button. I'll tell ya'more games should come with a Ya-hoo button. There's nothing like shouting out a Ya-hoo while grabbing air over fellow Monster Truckers.

The game also allows you to choose between three perspectives, from driver's seat to eagle's eye points of views.
The races are pretty much all about crushing stuff and mastering turns, though there are a number of floating power-ups and attack items on the courses that can help you overtake the leader or stretch your lead.

Although the graphics are very impressive, the audio leaves a bit to be desired. The engine and race sounds are pretty generic and the commentator doesn't have a lot of variety in his verbal bag of tricks.

Although this game is a ton of fun to play, it would have scored much higher if it would have included a multiplayer mode. It just doesn't make sense on a GBA to not include some form of multiplayer link up or turn-based racing.

Overall, Monster Truck Madness lives up to its name, providing gamers a chance to crush and crunch their way through tracks littered with debris while tearing around dirt turns and along hilly straight-aways.

Overview

Driving a monster truck -- what kid has not had that dream? Wouldn’t it be great to jump in, say, Grave Digger and blaze your own trail to the finish line? Thanks to Microsoft, we kids who refuse to grow up can live this dream.

Monster Truck Madness takes 12 of the hottest trucks on the planet and lets you jump behind the wheel. What makes this game different from the other run-of-the-mill racing games available? Freedom. You can go anywhere your truck will take you. The roads are just suggested pathways that you can use or ignore (I prefer to ignore). Bounce off trees, buildings, trains and motor homes. Float across waterways. Rip through the mud, gravel and grass.

What’s behind door number 2? CORRECT! Crushing cars! That’s right, fly over rows of cars. What monster truck rally would be complete without a few smashed 1972 Vega coupes?

Gameplay/Controls/Interface

All of this sounds great, but how does it play? In one word -- excellent. The trucks are very responsive but have the feel you would expect from a monster truck. This is not Indy racing here. This is off-road, thrashing, bashing and smashing. Big balloon tires take a little longer to turn than Goodyear high performance tires. Microsoft did a great job capturing this feel.

Monster Truck Madness has four different race types. The first is the circuit racing. Circuit racing has five different tracks that take you through a number of terrains. This is just straight-up racing at its best. It is very tempting to take shortcuts, but be careful and pick your spots well or you will end up on your back looking at the sky. The second race mode is rally racing. Rally racing takes you all over the world. From Arizona to the Scottish Highlands, there is plenty of sand, mud, water and trouble to get yourself into. Third is drag racing. This is the traditional, side-by-side monster truck race. It is you against another truck, with only a row of cars to jump. This was my least favorite of the races, because at the end of the drag strip you must make a 90-degree turn and head back to the finish line. The turn is too tight, and I always end up in the crowd or on my back. The final race type is the tournament. The tournament combines the above races into one. This allows you to test your skills in all situations.

Another neat feature is the ability to save and resume a game at any point. So when your better half is yelling at you to turn off the damn computer and take the garbage out, you can save your race and pick up right where you left off.

Monster Truck Madness has keyboard controls along with joystick controls. Both are easy to learn and use. Both driving methods are responsive and fun to use.

Graphics

The graphics were very surprising. Everything is 3D rendered, with numerous stadiums, domes and tracks to choose from. The game gives you the option of four race views, all of which have their good points. I prefer the "Chase Near" view, because it gives a good view ahead so you can pick your shortcuts. All of the races and trucks are nicely done. It appears that a great attention was given to details. Everything just looks realistic.

Audio

The audio is average but can be annoying at times. The same theme plays almost constantly. The commentator has a limited vocabulary, and I sometimes wondered if he was watching the same race I was, or if he was having flashbacks to a different race.

System Requirements

Pentium, Win 95, 8 MB RAM (12 MB recommended), 100 MB hard drive space, 2X CD-ROM drive, Hayes-compatible modem for head-to-head play

Reviewed on: Pentium 133, 24 MB RAM, 1 MB PCI video card

Game performance was excellent with this system. Load times were average, but gameplay was smooth.

Bottom Line

Monster Truck Madness is a great game. Microsoft has a winner here if people can get over the fact that it is not a spreadsheet or word processor program. The ability to go off-road and blaze your own trail makes it all the more fun. Although I only know of a few of the trucks, there are plenty to choose from. The only down side is that there are not enough tracks, and the drag race is just too constricted. These are little things that keep this game from the elite status, but there are still hours of fun to be had. This game is a definite picker-upper and gets a deserving 88.