Monster Truck Destruction Review

You know when you're vomiting and suffering from diarrhoea, and the onslaught of illness won't stop coming out of both ends? Well, happily, ODD Games has came along to distil that feeling into digital form with its Australian Government-funded release; Monster Truck Destruction. The Aussie Government has a chequered past with games – Manhunt, Grand Theft Auto, and Left 4 Dead all come to mind – but the fact that they got their hands on this one may be their crowning achievement in the field of appalling software mistakes.

Monster trucking brings to mind a hardcore and grungy aesthetic, and the developers have tried and failed to bring that atmosphere to life with the soundtrack, which sounds like what would happen if Limp Bizkit started doing porn music. It is the most generic and painful heavy metal ever shoved into anyone's ears, and we're counting the atrociously-soundtracked early-era THQ WWF games in that comparison. This soundtrack hits the ear so, so wrongly, and leaves you feeling dirty for about a week afterwards.

The gameplay is pretty poor, due to it being insanely limited. It mostly takes form in races or freestyle events on closed arena circuits, but both are no fun at all. Races are about 15 seconds long and are absolutely mind-bendingly terrible due to the atrocious controls, which are so disgustingly bad that they'll be covered in their own paragraph. Freestyle events are a smidge better as you're given free run of an arena, and can jump over rows of cars or smash through posts. This is about as fun and gleeful as the game gets, but after the femtosecond of vehicular madness wears off, you'll be brought crashing back down to reality by our old friend, the controls.

We've all played games with terrible controls, but at least we've probably been able to make them work in some capacity. Monster Truck Destruction's, however, are so bad that they're not even broken, they're simply incomplete. Get ready to oversteer like a cow on ice, as your truck will handle like a big boat through tight turns. This isn't a case of “just apply less turning”, though – doing a slight turn does nothing while going for a sharp aggressive turn will make you spin right round more times than Dead or Alive. This aspect of the game seems to betray its roots – the game is obviously a lazy mobile port, right down to the menus on screen being suspiciously organised as if the game was always meant to be held in the palm of your hand. However, the absolute worst part of the controls and even the game; so bad that it had me break down in a mix of laughter and tears at my desk - you cannot reverse your truck. Ever. You hit a wall, you're screwed (though if you bought this game, you're screwed anyway, but not as screwed as the developers when the Australian Government hears about this) and you're forced to restart. Quitting outright is always a better option, though.

The graphics are perhaps the only part of the game that aren't terrible. They're no saving grace, but they're perhaps the only palatable thing here, and perhaps in an alternate dimension, these trucks would get the love they deserve. The trucks look well designed and true to life, and all come with different interesting liveries and upgradable parts, so you can get the most out of your souped-up monster. The problem here is that while the vehicles are a half-interesting component, they're just rendered wet and impotent in the midst of the rancid chaos that is the rest of this game. I've played games on preschool V-Tech computers that were better designed than this heap of scrap.

Oh, and as some final disclosure to how terrible this game is and how that might extend to the development staff – this game was locked to us before the initial release date, making any reviews technically embargoed before this title came out, which can be a really sneaky and underhanded tactic from developers, as it allows them (and note that I'm using 'them' here in general terms) to suck up a bit of money before the bad reviews start rolling in, and believe me, they will start rolling in. However, really, is it right for us to question the morality of groups who think it is okay to release a mobile game onto the PC platform without even the slightest amount of polish or adjustments to make it more palatable on the new system?

This game is an absolute travesty, and should be avoided at all costs. An absolutely miserable excursion for masochists only that'll leave you sick for days. All that's left to do is wait for Prime Minister Tony Abbott to get on the phone to ODD Games...