When something is great at many things, but not superb in one particular area, we call it a jack of all trades. Monster Energy Supercross 4 – The Official Video Game (Supercross 4 for short) is the opposite of that. The game is a master class of great motocross racing.
The core riding mechanics are exceptional, provided you're able to muster the skills to take advantage of them. But because it focuses so heavily on the right formula, Supercross 4 is also an extremely shallow game, with unambitious and poorly executed extra modes. The result is an experience with limited appeal outside of diehard supercross fans.
Monster Energy Supercross – The Official Videogame 4 Review: Stuck in Neutral
As we noted in our preview, Supercross 4 is an authentic motocross game based on the real-world AMA Supercross World Championship, a racing series in which riders race on dirt bikes on challenging tracks covered in tight turns, complex series of hills and bumps and crowd-pleasing jumps.
These contests are a series of rounds where riders earn their way to the main event and rack up points towards a podium spot at the end of the season.
The core gameplay is outstanding but challenging. Winning races requires skillful driving. It is not enough to go around the track and avoid accidents. You have to plan in advance which line your bike will take and make very deliberate choices about how to approach the different sections. You need to shift your rider's weight so you don't mess up in turns or when jumping, and hitting a series of jumps at the wrong speed, for example, will leave your rider slowly dancing up and down while the rest of the pack flies in front of you. .
The game has a very limited tutorial, but even that seems aimed at motocross fans who've watched enough races to know the difference between whoops, jumps, doubles, and triples, and how to strategically approach each. of them. It's a shame because the races are exciting when you're near the front of the pack, looking for a position with your mates. However, the learning curve to get to that point, even with the difficulty setting the easiest, is extremely steep.
If you can master the race, then you are entitled to an authentic Supercross experience. The massive rosters of over 100 real-world racers, spread across 17 real-world circuits, are beautifully presented. More than 20 official teams fill the sponsor arenas you'd expect to see at a supercross event. Excellent visuals and rich audio work in tandem to create an immersive experience.
Unfortunately, modes outside of the Championship Series aren't faring as well. The single-player career mode is pretty basic. You start in the brand new Futures category. Through races, events, and training, you rank up your driver and work your way through the rookie and professional classes. There are upgrades for your bike that you buy, and you can join teams or find sponsors to earn more prestige.
Pilot upgrades are just a few linear trees that improve skills such as braking, cornering, and performing stunts in flight. On paper, this feels like it adds depth to the career mode. In practice, it's very linear and feels more like removing handicaps for parity than building the next Supercross superstar.
Most skill points come from practice activities between races and the system is frustrating. You have three total attempts before each race which can be split across five different types of training, ranging from incredibly short races to driving through gates on a track or doing tricks over jumps.
The problem is that you have three attempts in total and there is no way to practice without consuming an attempt. You better spend your time in the easiest activities. The skill tree is quite small and fills up quickly, making it a non-factor after just a few hours.
The free roaming mode is no better. It's fun to be had (for a few minutes) exploring and seeing how aggressively you can wrap your rider around a tree. You can find 20 collectibles scattered around the map, and there are places you can park to start small races or time trials. Everything is very shallow.
Worse, the experience is poorly optimized. It's shocking to go from a beautifully rendered Daytona Speedway in career mode to the constant bursting of trees over bland dirt textures in other modes, which shouldn't be a problem on the RTX 3090-powered PC on which this game was reviewed.
Monster Energy Supercross – The Official Videogame 4 Review: The Bottom Line
Benefits
- Top level motocross racing
- Excellent visuals
- Authentic Tracks and Sponsors
The inconvenients
- Modest improvement over previous games
- Unwelcoming to newcomers
- The quarry and the pulleys are unfortunately shallow
At this point, Monster Energy Supercross is a fully annualized franchise. The internet doesn't need another thesis on the pitfalls of this approach, but it puts this game at a strange crossroads. The best experience of this game will go to players who know how to run well. Still, it doesn't do much to teach new players how to do this.
Experienced players who can do this probably already have Supercross 3, and the changes in this year's release are more iterative than evolutionary. Tweaking a few modes, increasing the roster size, and fine-tuning the physics might not be enough to justify buying an all-new game.
Monster Energy Supercross 4 is not a jack-of-all-trades. It attempts to do a lot of things, but most fall flat. However, what it does well, which is thrilling and authentic motocross racing, it does with complete mastery.
It's a sometimes great game that's often mediocre, and a minor upgrade as a sequel.
[Note: Milestone provided the copy of Monster Energy Supercross — The Official Videogame 4 used for this review.]
