Monster Truck Rally is an interesting one. I originally thought that this was one of those ‘lost gem App’s’ sitting in the racing game section. How wrong was I?
Monster Truck Rally is essentially another racing game for the iPhone and iPod Touch. Race against opponents, win and earn points to unlock new tracks (only five in the game) resulting in new vehicles from the points. All mechanics we've come to just expect from many racing games nowadays.
The overall driving experience is poor. I found myself getting pushed into a wall on the track from an opponent and then my truck just spins right around from a tiny bit of conatct from the wall. This literally drove me crazy and was also very frustrating, because now I had to press the reset button which dramatically reduced the whole experience because I can’t catch up to the vehicles in front due to a weird over sensitive game engine.
So after all that I quickly discovered that if I wanted to restart the race I couldn’t just hit pause and select restart ‘oh know’ I had to go right back to the menu and select my vehicle track ect, all over again. Monster Truck Rally features many jumps within the terrain and the developer has clearly incorparted these deliberately to justify the monster trucks. But when I drive over a bump and then land, my vehicle spins over and I have to reset! The game mechanics are hilariously over sensitive.
The controls are pretty simple though, to steer you tilt the iPhone or iPod touch left and right and to accelerate you press the right hand side of the screen and to brake you press the left. The tilt sensitivity is awful and again it is too sensitive, mirroring the gameplay.
The graphics are half decent but considering this game isn't that old you would expect more impressive and slightly blow away graphics. Scenery and terrain just looks poorly designed. The actual vehicles are the best looking things on screen most of the time. Having said all this the developers have really tried to mix the tracks up with different terrains from snow to jungle to the desert which is good but again is badly implemented.
The sound track is really cool but the actual vehicles all sound very repetitive and the drifting sound effects from the player lightly going around a corner are just plain stupid and out of place entirely.
Overall Monster Truck Rally is not worth anyones money. I was really let down by this game and expected a lot more. However they could improve it by fixing the sensitivity issues and bugs. If they improved the graphics and controls it would seriously help and the last major thing is the navigation system which is completely broken right now, so that would also need mending. If all these issues were corrected, I'd give this game another go. Right now the best racing game of this genre is 2XL Trophylite.
