Last October I reviewed publisher Nacon and developer Teyon’s Monster Truck Championship game on PlayStation 4 and came away thinking it was good but not great. While I thought the game had quite a lot to do in it, I came away a little frustrated with the controls and feeling like it wasn’t that impressive visually. Now six months later the team has gone in and done some more work to bring the game over to the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series. If you want my full thoughts on the game you can read my original review here and to find out how the game has been improved on the PlayStation 5 continue reading below.
First off in terms of content Monster Truck Championship is exactly the same on PlayStation 5 as it was on PlayStation 4. Something I’ll clarify right away is that there is no free upgrade if you owned this game on PlayStation 4 already and so that means it probably won’t be worth it to you to pay full price again for this upgraded version. I’ll get into the technical improvements as we go but I’ll just say they aren’t enough for me to recommend this to prior buyers. If you’ve yet to buy this game then this version will undoubtedly be the best version to buy.
When I reviewed this game last year one of my major faults with it was that it just didn’t look impressive visually compared to a lot of other racing games that I had played over the past few years. While work has been done by the team to make it look better Monster Truck Championship on the PlayStation 5 still isn’t as impressive as racers like Forza, Gran Turismo, Dirt 5, and some other titles released over the past few years. It is better than what it was though as the 4K visuals help to make the trucks look a lot better than what they did. This same detail increase applies to the tracks as well and the framerate now running at 60 frames per second means you’ll be able to appreciate all of it in smoother fashion.
Load times are another area that was improved with the PlayStation 5 now powering through them in a couple seconds. Sadly, what PlayStation 5 feature the game doesn’t take advantage of is the DualSense controller. There is no haptic feedback outside of the vibration that was already in the PlayStation 4 version and there is no adaptive trigger support. This is very disappointing as games like Dirt 5, WRC 9, Monster Energy Supercross 4, and others are all making use of them and so it really makes this version of Monster Truck Championship feel less next-gen.
With all that said, Monster Truck Championship on PlayStation 5 looks, performs, and loads faster and better than ever. It’s still got a solid career mode and a lot of ways to customize your trucks but there are downsides here. There is no free upgrade so prior owners likely won’t be compelled by the minor upgrades to pay full price for this again and the lack of DualSense support is also disappointing. If you’ve yet to play it though there aren’t a lot of better options on the market when it comes to Monster Truck racing.
*Monster Truck Championship is available now on PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Xbox Series, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, and PC. Reviewed on a PlayStation 5. Review copy provided by the publisher for this review.
Monster Truck Championship
$39.99
Pros
- Career mode has enough variety to keep you interested
- Lots of ways to customize your trucks
- Trucks handle mostly how you would expect them to
- PlayStation 5 version visual and framerate improvements make it a more enjoyable experience
- Near instant load times
Cons
- No DualSense Controller Features Support
- No new content and no free upgrade means prior owners may not want to check it out
- Controls take practice and can be frustrating in certain events
- Lacks online features
