Vicariously Living the Monster Jam Fantasy

Having been fortunate enough to participate in the Grand Slam of Motor Sports in Los Angeles, California, in 1998, I can honestly state that Monster Jam: Maximum Destruction is about as realistic as a Playstation 2 game is going to get.

The audio alone reminds me of the deafening roar of the monster trucks when I had to stand fifteen yards in front of them to tell the drivers to start their engines. Never mind that standing so far away was a security measure as much as a visibility issue for the driver; one had to be ready for the massive truck to inadvertently jump forward at ignition and be able to clear its path immediately. The sound of the Monster Jam game resonates with intense roaring very well.

The detail of the graphics captures the smallest bumper sticker and sponsor tags on every enormous machine, and it's exciting to see the realistic smashing and crushing of the fiberglass bodies as players drive these trucks into any obstacle--even those on the outskirts of the race paths. Painstaking efforts seem commonplace in nearly every corner and cranny of any building or land mass, making for very realistic encounters between manmade machine and God-breathed landscape--well, somewhat realistic, for I've never seen a monster truck scale the sheer side of a butte to spawn a 400-foot wheelie! But, if a truck could, then Monster Jam creates a realistic impression of such a feat.

Action and racing come in two modes: normal and pro. Each mode tabulates its own amount of points. Points allow the user to unlock variant tracks and other monster trucks, twenty beasts altogether. Three kinds of action dominate the game: Challenge series (a single player accumulates points to unlock additional track and trucks); Single event (also a single player mode that allows for practice--points appear and are saved upon completion of a race, but I have yet to see those points have any effect on the Challenge series amount; and Cross Country mode, (unbridled, boundless good practice for two or more players).

Within the Challenge and Single event action, two kinds of races offer players the choice between stadium races and outdoorsy races. The stadium races (other than free style) confine the driver/player to the limited boundaries of a stadium floor. This venue requires more finesse while using the controller than the open-road racing does. On the open road races, anything goes. It is easy to accumulate thousands of points by crushing, smashing, and jumping over any obstacle on and off the race track.

In terms of fun, Monster Jam offers unlimited use of several modes and as much racing as one could possibly stand in eight straight hours of playing--not that daddy would ever stay on the PS2 for that many hours, in a row! Fun dominates every aspect of this game, and I can't wait to get home to play it!