Hot Wheels Monster Trucks: Stunt Mayhem – Review

Hot Wheels is a long-lived franchise that I’ve personally always enjoyed, in particular the recent Hot Wheels Unleashed games. I’ve also always had a bit of a soft spot for the spectacle of monster trucks, where I had my time as a Gravedigger fan. So when a Hot Wheels Monster Truck game came up, I was eager to dive in and give it a go. However, after putting a good many hours into this game, I’m left very conflicted.

First off, this is a great-looking game and running on my PS5 it was as smooth as butter. Each of the iconic monster trucks you play with looks great, although the alternate skins you can unlock leave much to be desired. There’s also only a handful of courses available and while the first course is a little small and boring, later courses become increasingly complex and interesting.

Each level has multiple tiers to unlock from stunt points attained to the level of destruction caused, as well as some bonus objectives. There are also “Boss Fights” that sound interesting at first but simply amount to “hit these targets multiple times and do this one stunt, then do that three times“. These all start interesting enough and provide some replay value in an attempt to achieve all the objectives, but the shine quickly wears off giving way to boredom.

This is the sort of game that thrives on the couch co-op experience, especially for young kids who may want to play with their friends or family. Unfortunately, all the trucks and stages are locked behind the lacklustre career single-player mode which puts a significant damper on the experience. If the career mode were more fun then I wouldn’t necessarily consider this a problem but with how tedious career mode is I’m not sure how many people, especially children, would really play through it all just to be able to enjoy the multiplayer.

I’m afraid the failings of this game don’t stop there. While the music is okay, the announcer is incredibly dull. I couldn’t feel any excitement coming through from the performance and they simply repeat the same few lines over and over, either the name of the stunt you just performed or that your combo streak is over. This led to me quickly muting the game and listening to my own music or watching YouTube on a second screen as I played.

Monster Trucks are notoriously difficult to handle, and that appears to translate into how the trucks control in-game. Whether they went for realism or simply didn’t program the movement very well, the game is not particularly fun to play. The controls themselves are pretty well laid out and easy to understand, but how they translate into the game is another matter entirely. Simply put I didn’t have fun controlling the trucks and that is probably the most fatal flaw in this game.

In all, I was really looking forward to, and hoping to enjoy, Hot Wheels Monster Trucks: Stunt Mayhem. It should’ve been a smash hit for me. However terrible controls, tedious repetitive gameplay, and overall lack of content disappointed me.

Some people who are more into monster trucks than I am may get more mileage from it, or those who enjoy stunt-based score attack games. But a pretty paint job still doesn’t hide the rot beneath the surface. You may find some enjoyment if you pick it up at a steep enough discount but I would highly recommend staying away from it at full price.