Thank you THQ Nordic for sending us this game to review!

We’ve reviewed many different kinds of games over the years, but it surprised me to find that our first ever monster truck review was late last year! And now here we are with number two – and they couldn’t be more different.

Monster Jam Steel Titans 2 is almost the polar opposite to the game I recently reviewed, Monster Truck Championship. While that game is extremely challenging with realistic physics and a career mode, this game is all about the fun. The physics are light and floaty, while the arenas are simple and sometimes silly. But, somehow, the simple joys of driving around and smashing things doesn't get old!

As soon as you start this game, you are simply asked to press 'A' - and after a few simple tutorials, you're dropped right into the starting area of Camp Crushmore. It's from here where you choose a truck, and are given the freedom to just romp around the starting area as much as you like. I was surprised how much fun simply driving around can be! You steer the front two wheels with the left analog stick, like on most cars. You can also steer the rear wheels with the right analog stick - and you definitely will need to do this. It enables much tighter turns, but more than that, you can recover from flipping over more easily when you can twist and turn those huge tires to help you spin in a circle or otherwise get back right-side-up without having to abuse the reset button (usually 'B').

And flipping you will do. One of the most divisive aspects of this game is how floaty the physics are. It makes it super simple to do a flip, roll, spin, or jump. Drive off of a bump, and you’re instantly airborne. This works great for all of the stunt modes, like Freestyle, Two-Wheel Skills, or Destruction. However, there are also racing modes, like Head-To-Head, Circuit Racing, and Waypoint. These modes are really great and have quite a bit of variety. But the floaty physics can drive you crazy, as you flip, roll, or tumble far too easily – and lose the race, even if you were winning for most of it!

Another thing I found is that on most simulator racing games, I prefer cockpit view, or perhaps hood view, so you can see more of the world ahead of you; it helps me enforce discipline, to prevent reckless driving. (This game only offers various external views, and a single cockpit view; no hood or bumper views.) In this game, I strongly recommend you get used to one of the external/rear camera modes. Why, you might ask? Have you ever been inside of a car while it's flipping head over heels at high speeds? Yeah - I'm not normally susceptible to motion sickness, and maybe I'd get used to it - but when I flipped for the first time in first-person view, I nope'd right out of that camera setting.

The more I played this game, the more I realized that it is targeted in large part to young children - though it's still fun enough to be enjoyed by anyone. At first, in Camp Crashmore, it's not that obvious; you can smash park benches, chairs, porta-potties, and garbage cans, and some ice cream signs. These somewhat suggest kids being a target audience, but it's not really obvious until you reach the second area, called Bark Park, where there are beach balls and dog bones to run over. It's cute. After these sections, the themes change dramatically, to a futuristic region, then a Mad Max-style wasteland, then finally a zombie/Halloween-themed area. These are all dramatically different from each other, and are also significantly more intricate than the first two areas.

Based on all of the races needed to get past the first two sections, I suspect few younger kids will make it past Bark Park - or at least they wouldn't have, until they released a brand new 'Playground Mode' in the latest patch that disables all progress and saving, but unlocks everything so anyone can just race around everywhere freely, with any truck in the game! I have to say, this was a really great, and thoughtful addition. (They could have easily called it 'reviewer mode' and not been wrong.) While my kids are all older now (teenagers), there was definitely a time not so long ago that I would have had a blast playing this game with my son (and even now, when I asked him to help me review it, he had fun in the time we did play it together).

It seems to me that the main free roam mode is the default, easy to access mode in order to make it as easy as possible for children to enjoy this game. Most of the more advanced content, like the racing and tricks modes, are locked behind either driving to specific areas of the map, or by pressing 'start' (or equivalent) on your controller. Here, you can access each of the game modes, including various single player career-like races, split screen two player, and online play. (I have not found anyone online to play with both times I tried it.) Split screen seems to offer mostly co-op play; it works great and we had a good time with it, but one time while doing a head-to-head match, my truck appeared inside of another, making the race awkward. I am uncertain if this was (or will be) fixed in a patch.

The main racing modes can easily be broken down into stunt and racing, as mentioned before. Each of the three stunt modes work similarly; you are trying to get the highest score, with slightly different limitations. Freestyle is the purest mode, where you can do basically any stunt that you want, as long as you rack up combos to get the highest score. Two-Wheel Skills is similar, except the only skills that rack up points are ones where some of your wheels are off of the ground. IT's simpler as it sounds, as doing cyclones is very easy (just turn both sets of wheels towards each other and spin in a circle) and it counts towards the needed score. Destruction is the flipside of Two-Wheel; instead of doing tricks, you try to break as much stuff as possible in the time allotted. In order to do well, just drive over things with as short of a break as possible in between things, to rack up large combos.

The racing modes, Head-to-Head, Circuit Racing, and Waypoint, are far more challenging. The first, Head-to-Head, is by far the easiest, as long as you slow down to turn. Most courses are simple ovals or some variation of that; just keep your wheels on the ground, go as fast as you can, and you'll do fine. The other two are much more difficult. Circuit Racing is what it sounds like; do laps around a track. Waypoint is where you go from one place on the map to the next, until you've been to them all. This is both by far the most interesting, and potentially frustrating, mode in the game.

Both Circuit Racing and Waypoint take place out in the world map, rather than in an enclosed arena from around the country (USA). As a result, races can be quite exciting and creative, with all different kinds of obstacles in the way. In many ways, these are the highlight of the game - they can be awesome. However, they can also be that source of extreme frustration mentioned before; that floaty physics means that no matter how well you do, you can be one wipeout away from last place. And they come really easily. You learn really quickly to avoid many of the shortcuts that you otherwise think might work, not because they might not - they often do - but because even if they do, if you don't land perfectly, you could easily lose the gained time and then some simply getting pointed in the right direction again. It's a source of constant frustration, and takes a lot away from a game that otherwise brings a bit smile to my face.

And that's pretty much how I feel about this game. I really wish that the physics could be a touch more realistic and less bouncy. But other than that? It's just simply so much fun! From an appropriateness standpoint, it's really clean - there is vehicular violence if you slam into another truck (or smash a car underneath you), and the final area is zombie themed, with hands and such sticking out of the ground in places. There are drivers inside of the trucks, and you can choose if they are male or female; death isn't possible (or shown). In theory, online players could be rude or difficult, but I don't know to what level of interaction is allowed other than to warn you it's possible since I never saw anyone online.

From a technical perspective, it runs really well for the most part, with minor glitches. I noticed that shadows in a few places can flicker on NVIDIA, but it otherwise plays wonderfully. I tried the game in Linux, using Steam's Proton compatibility layer, and as long as you are patient and wait for the expected shader compilation, it runs about as well as it does on Windows. On my tiny Intel-based portable GPD Win Max, the game runs great (in Windows) on Low detail, but there is texture flickering in the grass, which is likely a driver bug. (In Linux, there appears to be driver bugs there also, as it runs well but has quite a bit of texture flickering, even more than on Windows.) I already mentioned the Head-to-Head split screen bug, which will hopefully be fixed in the future. One common complaint that I happen to agree with is that there are no water effects when you drive into it; your tires show below the water line, but the surface appears undisturbed. I hope this is something that they can patch in as well, as water splashes when you drive through it often looks really nice.

Monster Jam Steel Titans 2 is probably the farthest thing from a simulator. It's all about pure driving craziness, with big wheels and small(er) things crushed beneath them. It's about getting huge airtime and driving in circles carving dirt donuts into the grass. It's a game where I would login to verify the existence of some game modes to write this review, and 30 minutes later realize I haven't typed another word since I've been messing around in free roam too long - and forgot to even get the information I launched the game to gather. It's certainly not a perfect game, and the physics certainly could be better, but it's just so much fun, and with a ton of content mixed in there, not to mention thirty eight trucks - which are all (or mostly) real, by the way, since this is licensed by the actual Monster Jam organization. There are real-world arena levels mixed in with the fantasy races to make quite a bit of variety. If the zombie/Halloween themes of the final level don't bother you, I highly recommend taking the nearest youngster with you and crushing some park benches underneath your wheels!