Meh...
The last Supercross/Motocross/Motorcycle game that I remember playing is Motocross Madness 2 for the PC like 15 years ago so to just say that I am not really a fan of this whole genre of racing games doesn't even begin to cover it. When I was asked if I wanted to review the game, I said sure send it over, didn't knew anything about it, didn't even heard anything about it until that moment.
Monster Energy Supercross - The Official Videogame apart from being quite a mouthful for a title also gives hints of what expect, a branded game sponsored by an energy drink, which I like and drink, and I have nothing wrong with all that. It's just that reading that title, I know what to expect from it as you should too. But before talking about what I didn't like, let's sum up what the game has to offer.
Career mode lets you "create" a rider, choose a bike and participate in events, tournaments and races. Depending on how you do, you earn credits which you can use to unlock extra customizations for your character and improve or buy new better bikes. Other than Career, you can take part in the official 2017 Supercross tournament where you can ride as one of the real-life riders that took part in the actual competition. Apart from setting up random Races and Tournaments, that is the extent of the offline modes. Then there's the Multiplayer where you can compete against 11 other players. The last thing, which if you're into this sort of things might be the best part, is the Editor where you can create your own tracks, upload them online and race against other players on your own creation. The Editor is quite extensive, even though of course it has its limitations.
Now if what you read until now, got you excited about the game, great go ahead and get it. If it didn't you might want to continue reading until the end. The biggest problem with the game is that it's just kinda boring. Riding around the same looking tracks over and over again with janky physics loses gets really boring really quickly. The sense of speed is there as there's a lot of motion blur, but the physics of the motorcycle does not feel good. You accelerate way too quickly and when you hit a jump or a bump on the track it sends you flying high even when you are just at 35 kmph. Cornering is easy and arcade-ish and even if you mess up like fall down or go out of bounds you can just hit R1 to rewind time before you messed up and progress like nothing really happened. Maybe this is a superpower that you get when you drink enough Monster, I don't know I haven't achieved this level IRL yet, and since there was no limit or penalty to how many times I used this feature, I just kept using it winning every race.
And once I won, I was greeted by a screen saying how much credits I earned which I didn't really care at all, another one where it filled my screen with my progress towards many achievements which I didn't really care at all and one or two more screens which, yes you guessed it, I didn't really care at all. The whole game feels like a chore you have to do. There's nothing exciting to experience, see or do, just the same motorcycle riding around the same looking dirt track with the same janky physics over and over again.
On the other side of the medallion, the game can look quite nice to look at especially when the dirt track is wet. The motorcycles look really good too and even though this might sound really strange due to what I said before about physics, the way the bike looks while riding, how it feels every bump and how it slightly moves up and down due to suspensions is fantastic. The "helmet cam" camera mode looks just like just real life, I have never seen anything like it before and I really liked it. What else did I like, let me think? Well, nothing else.
It's a generic by the numbers racing game. It's not exciting, it's kinda boring with janky physics, but it does look quite good in some moments when the frame rate is stable and doesn't fluctuate. It all boils down to what you like. If you are an avid fan of Supercross as a sport, then this might be the game for you. If not, look somewhere else. Thanks for reading!
