I remember when my dad took me to a monster truck show for my sixth birthday. It was just me and him, and there are three main things that stuck out in my mind. One, we had to wear earplugs the whole time because it was so loud! Next, the finale of the show was a demolition derby between three mac trucks WITH trailers, which was awesome for a six year old. And finally, I fell asleep on the way home, and when I woke up the next morning in my own bed, something seemed different. When I looked down I saw my other birthday present, new Pac-Man bedsheets! (this was the early 80’s, after all) Now you can go to a monster truck show without ever needing to leave your house, or wear earplugs, with Monster Jam, a downloadable game for iOS devices (iPad version reviewed here).

Controlling your monster truck is simple: hold down a finger on the touch screen to accelerate, and tilt the device to steer. You can hit the nitro button for a quick burst of speed, and tap on any power-ups you’ve bought. Participate in four events. In Freestyle, do as many stunts and crush as many cars in a stadium setting to earn as many points as you can in the time limit. In Racing, you’ll zip around the same stadium and try to reach the goal before the other truck does.

The other two events aren’t as realistic. In the Tow Pull, you must drag an airplane across the runway as far as you can. The last event is like a 2-D obstacle course with ramps, and you must jump over as many as you can, crash through houses, and not take too much damage yourself. It kind of reminds me of Trials HD, but with monster trucks instead of motorbikes.

By completing daily challenges and reaching high scores at events, you can earn coins which you can spend on upgrades for your truck, or even new official monster trucks to race as. But those are really expensive and you’ll have to play for a long time before you can afford those. And unfortunately, you may not want to play for a long time because this game just isn’t that fun. Controls are unresponsive and the events are just not very entertaining.

Kid Factor:

While there are a lot of exploding cars and trucks, violence is rather minimal. Reading skill is helpful for the instructions, but kids might get bored and or frustrated at the bad controls and lackluster gameplay. It might be better just to take them to a real monster truck show instead. I think that this game was made to promote the new Monster Jam tour, so you might want to put this on your bucket list and see if there are any monster truck shows in your area coming up. I loved going to the monster truck show as a kid and it was very memorable to me, so I bet your kids would like it, too. Just don’t forget to bring earplugs!

Tags: Game Reviews