Don’t get me wrong, Monster 4X4 is a pretty decent game but not what I was hoping for by any means. The game only allows the player a few options as to how they can play the game. They can either do a quick race or enter the Monster League Competition (or World Circuit if you prefer). If you decide to do a quick race there are only five different options for the player to choose from as far as race modes: Normal mode, Reverse, Dual mode, Pure Racing or Reverse Pure Racing.

The actual racing itself reminds me more of the game Crash Team Racing then it does any type of monster truck racing. The tracks are littered with objects and weapons for you to use to slow down your opponent or speed yourself up. For example, there are cans that are on fire that litter the race track. If you hit one of these cans just right you can fire it at an opponent and light there tires on fire forcing them to slow down. Wow, I never knew monster truck racing could be so dangerous!

There are also various short cuts scattered around the track but in order to gain access to them you have to hit a “trigger” which will open up the path on the track. These triggers are in various places around the race track and look like an X with the word “shortcut” above it. There are also triggers around the track that will create traps for other trucks to slow them down, speed up platforms that will give you a quick boost of speed and nitro charger’s that will give you an extra nitro boost to use during the race (you actually start with three nitro boosts to use whenever you want).

There are also ramps around the race track that allow you to do stunts such as 360’s or flips. These stunts will gain you extra points during the race and fill up your nitro bar a little bit. You can also destroy objects around the race track such as boxes and cars to gain extra points. During the World Circuit these points are used to unlock new monster trucks (which there are very few of).

The different types of monster trucks, or lack of I should say, is also very disappointing. There only appears to be 14 trucks available for competition, a very low number in a game such as this. There are a few ways the player can customize the monster trucks though, which adds a little more fun to the game. The player can change the paint colors of any of the trucks and can also add decals to the trucks, but that is it.

There are a few mini-games available for play but they are only available for play in multi-player. I felt this was semi-disappointing since I was looking for different ways to play the game rather than simply racing since I don’t have anyone to play against in multi-player.

As far as graphics are concerned the game looks like it is just a little bit behind the times. The game play looks blocky and doesn’t really come close to impressing. I’ll give them credit and say that some of the explosions in the game look very cool but outside of that I wasn’t too impressed.

The game controls were a bit confusing for me when I first started playing the game. I expected that in order to accelerate you’d hit the right trigger, but apparently they decided that was too simple. Instead, I had to use the A button to accelerate. The right trigger would be used for performing the stunts when you hit the ramps around the race track. Frankly I think they could have switched these two but that’s just my opinion.

The game interface is fairly simple to understand. The developers did a good job not overdoing the interface in the game. In the top right corner you have the amount of points you’ve earned during that particular race. The bottom left corner is your MPH gauge while in the top left corner of the screen you find how many laps you’ve completed and just below that your lap times. Simple and effective.>p? Something I noticed that I didn’t particularly like was that every time you started the game you had to go in and manually load your saved game. It might be something minor to some people but to me it is semi-annoying. You would think they could have created a way to simply check for a saved game when loading the game but apparently they didn’t have the budget for it.

You know, maybe it’s just me but I figured that a monster truck game should have been a lot more fun than this. Sure, the game has its fun spots. Firing a can that’s on fire at your competition certainly can be loads of fun. However, there are too many problems with this game to really make it worth playing. If you’re a serious gamer don’t bother picking this one up, but if you have kids this one might be more there style.