For the dirt bike lovers out there, Milestone S.r.l. brings us a game to engage in frantic races without the laundry headaches afterward. Monster Energy Supercross is the official video game of the 2017 Monster Energy Supercross Championship. Should you start your engine or just leave your bike parked? Let’s find out.
THE GOOD
- The game has all the official race tracks of the 2017 championship, and it shows in the quality and fun of some of these. While I’m not a fan of all of them, in general, they are very well designed and great to race on.
- If you are not satisfied with the tracks supplied, the game features a track editor that lets you completely design your track layout, including the type of stadium. When you finish and validate your track, you can even share it online for other players to use.
- You have the choice of multiple game modes, time attack, single event, championship, career and online. Sure, it doesn’t change the gameplay, but it’s nice to have a choice on how engaged you want to be, with career being my favorite option because of the progression in sponsor and class unlocks it offers.
MIXED FEELINGS
- The Ralph Sheheen sound bites at the start and end of a race are great, but I wish there were more of them, offering more variation. The same goes for the soundtrack. It’s high quality but low quantity, including a couple more songs, would have been appreciated.
- Online racing is usually a rather poor experience due to the unbelievable high percentage of people in matchmaking that only want to see others crash. Supercross is sadly no exception. A bike being more vulnerable and fragile than a car doesn’t help in this regard. There is a no collision setting when creating a match to try to alleviate this, but that also makes the experience less realistic. However, I’ve had no luck getting a created match going and could only join through quick The game adds AI racers when the lobby isn’t filled, which is a good thing.
THE BAD
- While the overall racing can feel somewhat believable, the physics that are employed can completely ruin the immersion at times. If you collide with obstacles things can quickly go from okay to bad. You can come to a complete stop by barely touching a cushion at one time, at another time said cushion would launch you 15 feet into the air. It’s not pretty.
- The game plays great on the Xbox One X, and if I had only played it on their, I would have missed this, but on a regular Xbox, the performance is not very good. During multiple times in a race, the action will freeze for a second or so, completely throwing you off. If you play on the One X, you can ignore this point. But since this is an Xbox One game I have to include it.
- This game needs some proper tutorials. The Track Editor has tutorials, but they are the worst I have ever seen in a game, just a silent movie where the available menu options fly by teaching you nothing at all. For the racing part and controlling your bike it’s even worse, there is no instruction whatsoever. The lack of guidance makes it hard to get into the game and hurts the overall experience when starting out. For instance, the game allows you to scrub a jump, but it never tells you that you can do so or how. But when you perform it, you will get points for performing one. If a video was too expensive, just include some text describing features like this, there is no good reason not to.
Monster Energy Supercross [Score: 65%] A decent dirt bike racing game. The core gameplay is good enough, and the inclusion of a track editor is just great. The overall package is a bit lackluster, and the new player experience is a rough one due to the lack of information and tutorials. If you’re a dirt bike fan, specifically of the FIM World Championship, then you should probably get this game. Others could enjoy this as well, but you might want to try it out first.