In addition to the Championship mode, there are five single race types available. Each set of races has nine challenges and although these reuse a lot of the same tracks (there are only nine in the game), each challenge sets a best time and contributes toward an unlockable 3D trophy.īig vroom.
The main game mode is Championship, which offers four difficulty levels (Performance, Challenge, Super and Extreme) and a fifth (World Finals) when the other four are beaten. There doesn't appear to be any ability differences between each of the trucks, but their designs ooze personality. The game features a whopping twenty selectable monster trucks: seven to start with and the rest unlocked through gameplay. It's a smart design decision to link unlockables to a score tally rather than completed races, because it gives the player one more reason to drive through as many obstacles as possible during a race and live a little dangerously. Monster points can be earned through destruction or pulling off crazy moves such as catching air and doing wheelies. Crushing objects also earns the player Monster Points, which contribute to unlocking trucks and tracks. It doesn't make much sense logically, but as a game convention it forces the player to collide with as many objects as possible in order to keep the lead on the harder difficulty settings. However by plowing through cars, crates, light posts and other objects on the track, the truck receives additional speed boost without overheating. The player can use the R button to boost their truck for a limited time, but this quickly causes the truck to overheat. Although most of the game is focused on racing around tracks in a bid for first place, the developers made sure to focus heavily on destruction in the game, too. So when a corner is taken too quickly, the truck will begin to slide along the edge of its wheels and force the player to wobble it back to stability. The trucks handle very true to how one would expect them to. The game mixes equal parts track racing and destruction-wreaking in one of the more unique racing hybrids on the system. Publisher Activision and developer Torus Games have teamed up for a DS racing game that pays homage to those massive, rocking trucks of the 80's and today with Monster Jam for the Nintendo DS. I think I saw Bigfoot! No, not the brown yeti variation, I'm talking about the monster truck variety.