Thunder Truck Rally
Monster Trucks offers nine rugged off-roaders with which to race across jagged, imposing terrains. Not the only game to twist the racing genre to this end, but as you'd expect from Psygnosis, the quality of presentation is head and shoulders above the rest. There are two types of courses; circuits offer demanding hilly terrains which can easily trash the vehicle and must be learned intimately. Endurance courses offer greater freedom, with the aim of finding the best route to link eight dispersed checkpoints. To avoid any disorientation, arrows guide you to the next marker. Each area, be it snowy or volcanic, has characteristic features and hazards, yet this doesn't stop a repetitive feel developing. The third option is a fun mode, and one you might expect from the developer of Destruction Derby. Players have sixty seconds to take their truck on a car smashing spree.
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The game itself plays okay, but it suffers from a very baffling gameplay decision which is giving your truck a health bar. Now this wouldn't be so bad if it weren't for the fact that you take damage from jumping. That's right, don't do the cool thing. Anytime your wheels leave the ground, anything from a small bump to gigantic leaps will result in damage to your health bar. This combined with all the damage taken from running into other trucks as well as the jagged hitboxes of hills will add up incredibly quickly. Even with the tankiest vehicle on the roster I will find my health bar going down quickly on some tracks, and the low armor truck is basically unplayable because all their speed is wasted due to needing to slow down so they don't get killed on the first lap. Absolutely astonishing that they would even have this be a thing on the normal circuit racing. Like, when you play a racing game you'd want to go as fast as you can and get big air right? Why punish the player for it?
"Nah, I like my races slow, plodding and methodical." ~ the world's most boring person
To be fair this stuff makes sense for the actual endurance races, but I don't like that mode so... eh? shrugs
Mario leaps his kart into the air
Kart explodes from impact with the ground
Mario has died. 8TH PLACE.