Monster Energy Supercross 3 Review

Juan over at SwitchWatchTV got his hands on some Monster Energy. Wait. A game? Oh, never mind. Juan got his hands on Monster Energy Supercross 3 The Official Video Game! I guess there are more than one of these things. Who knew? Well, let’s see what Juan thought about the game! You can check out the video below or keep scrolling down to read the review here. Let’s check this out!

STORY(?)

Lets start off by saying that this is the Official Monster Energy AMA Supercross Championship game. So licenses are here! That means if you follow this sport, then that’s going to be something you like.

There are 100 riders of both the 450sx and 250sx categories with 15 official stadiums. In this iteration, you will also be able to join official teams in career mode. Thing is that’s very well and good, but what does this play like?

GAMEPLAY

I have to say it plays pretty damn well, but it takes a lot of practice. I am not a massive fan of the sport, but I can appreciate how difficult it is and how much skill is required for these riders to not only race around a track but to be able to perform jumps with the right timing and speed without one crashing into a mound or into another rider.

In the first few hours of the game, it took a good while to get used to and a lot of frustration ensued as I would end up flying off the track, smashing into other riders or just not getting my jumps right. This is not an arcade game. This is a simulation, and it’s to be taken very seriously.

One of the gripes I had in terms of fun was that if you fall off just once, you are more or less done. It’s very difficult to make the comeback. It’s essential you have a good start and make as little mistakes as possible, because just one can cost you dearly. And when there are so many variables at play, you will make a lot of mistakes, and that will either annoy you or it will spur you on to learn every facet of the tracks.

Practice Makes Perfect

It takes practice to land jumps at the optimum point so you get speed going into the next corner, and it takes skill knowing exactly when to break and accelerate and have the wheels pointing in the right direction. If you hit a mound with the front wheel, you will go flying off the bike. This game is a challenge, but one that I relished.

I do think the the AI riders are too good even on easy mode. Either that, or I am terrible at the game no matter how hard I was trying. There are lots of settings to change the bikes dynamics as well as make the game less or more difficult for you with a range of assists you can turn on or off.

Options

There are plenty of options here to keep you entertained both for the casual player and the hardcore. For single players, there is a career mode which I will get into in a minute, you have the choice of the single event where you can choose from standard, triple crown, and West Showdown with class 250 only.

You have time attack which is one of my favorites, as you can leave your times on the online leaderboard which is always nice if you are a competitive beast. Championship allows you to take part in a sequence of races, and there are a load of challenges too from head-to-head to mind the gates and more. In compound mode, you have the ability to explore the compound with no rules or finish lines. It is basically a free roam mode which to be honest was fun for all of 5 minutes.

There is a lot of content here, but you won’t enjoy all of it the same. For me, it was career mode and time attack which took my fancy. And in terms of customizing your rider and bike, there are options from coloring the bike, the rider’s clothes and equipment, and changing the numbers.

Of course you will need credits to buy better looking stuff, all of which can be earned through the career mode. Here you have all sorts of options from one shot to semi pro to the real thing where you can take part in qualifying, heats, last chance qualifier, and main event. You do this for all you fans out there, and this will have you going for hours and hours on end, and just as well too because the price of entry is high!

Multiplayer

Multiplayer modes include a local multiplayer where a bunch of you can play, but there was no online race options to try out other than leaderboards at the time of review. I found this rather disappointing, but it honestly could not have been helped.

The game on Switch doesn’t have dedicated servers for online, though. It allows multiplayer and co-op features using traditional peer-to-peer systems instead. All multiplayer features on the Switch are included in the D1 patch. Due to technical issues, the Switch D1 patch is not available at launch but will be available soon after.

For those of you that like making your own tracks, well there is some good news. You can with the track editor. It’s not for me, as I am more of a player than creator. But it works well enough and is logical enough to create something decent.

AUDIO

In Monster Energy Supercross, you have a bunch of songs included, but I have always been one in these types of games to turn the background music off as I find it a little off-putting. For the purpose of the review, though, I have kept them playing so you can hear a little for yourself in the video.

The sound effects are fine and do a decent job. It’s not spectacular, but then again what exactly can you do other than record the sounds of motorbikes. For me, turn the music off and get in tune with the bikes’ engines, and then it’s you versus the track and the riders. The commentator at the beginning of the race makes it sound rather entertaining, which is a plus, but that’s where the commentary ends.

VISUALS & PERFORMANCE

I am rather impressed. It runs of course at 30FPS, but the riders look decent and there was no slowdown. There was quite a lot of loading of the tracks, and you can sometimes see parts of the track load up, like it pops in, which is a little distracting, but it’s not terrible by any means. Again, I am rather more critical of the price point than this.

There is not much to the tracks. There’s only so much you can do to make it look really fantastic, as they are dirt tracks. I would have liked to have seen a little more mud splattering around, but it will suffice and the track editor is easy to use. The rider editor is not the best I have ever seen, but there are loads of options which is cool. I rather liked for playing this game in handheld for some reason, though.

VALUE

Wow, Monster Energy Supercross 3 is expensive. You are looking at having to pay a monster £53,99 in the UK, and in the USA you are looking at $49.99. That means it’s cheaper in the USA, so buy it there if you really can’t wait.

Would I personally be happy paying that price? Well, if I was a massive fan of the sport, then this has me covered. But since I am not a massive fan, this is a game I would pick up when it went on sale and was half the price. It does have a ton of other modes and customizations and it is playable.

Thank you for reading the Monster Energy Supercross 3 Review here on SwitchWatch.co.uk. We hope you enjoyed! Happy gaming, everyone.