Jump on your bike, rev up, and race in some high-stake supercross action! Check our Monster Energy Supercross – The Official Videogame 4 review!
Cross is Super Again!
The official videogame of the Monster Energy AMA Supercross Championship is back with its fourth edition, the most extreme ever!
A SUPER CAREER
Make your way along the path that will lead you to success. A new career mode will put your abilities to the test in order to bring out the champion inside you!
Learn new riding abilities in the ”Future” category; refine them and obtain new sponsors in the ”Rookie” category. Become a real ”Pro” by taking your riding style to the limit and challenging the toughest adversaries in the 450SX class.CREATOR OF YOUR OWN FUN
Unbridle your imagination with the new editor. Build unique tracks with the modules inspired by the official tracks and share your creations with the community.THE NEW COMPOUND
Explore, seek out new adventures, train, and challenge your friends in the new compound. Hurtle through fantastic island scenarios. Satisfy your desire for thrills!SUPER RIDERS, SUPER TRACKS
Choose your favorite rider from an army of over 100 riders as you range over the 450SX and 250SX categories. Race in the 11 stadiums and on the 17 tracks of the season.FULL CUSTOMIZATION
Over 100 official brands for customizing bikes and riders. Autograph your Supercross!
Monster Energy Supercross – The Official Videogame 4 is coming from Milestone, Field Entertainment, and Koch Media. Even though it’s the 4th iteration of the franchise, this is the first time I’ve gotten a chance to play a game in the series. I enjoy racing games, but recently most of the motorcycle games I’ve played have been very sim-heavy, so I was looking for a lighter experience.
Monster Energy Supercross – The Official Videogame 4 drops you into a quick create a character to start. Honestly, it’s unimpressive at best, with very little choice on trying to make your character look like yourself. I can normally dive into a character creator for quite a while, perfecting my look, but this took minutes. It doesn’t matter too much since your character wears a helmet while racing, but it still feels disappointing.
Once you dive into the Monster Energy Supercross – The Official Videogame 4, you’ll find the Career Mode is where you are going to be spending the bulk of your time. This one is split into a few options, including Futures, Rookies, and Pros. You’re essentially working your way from the minor leagues up to the latter as you progress and get better. It’s a pretty standard Career Mode that you expect to find in a racing game.
I think what caught me off guard was how hard it was to start my run. As someone who has recently got the Platinum trophy for Dirt 5, it’s easy to see that racing games are something I enjoy playing, so I was surprised when this one was pushing me right from the start. This particular game has an RPG-style system for getting better as you play. What this means is that you’re are going to suck when you first start to race, with everything improving the more you play. The issue with this is that it’s a system that might feel off-putting for some gamers. What does feel unfair is that the AI-controlled opponents you’ll race against don’t seem to be going through the same struggles as you.
That being said, it does get more fun once you have some points in your skill tree, and you can feel how your character gets better. The smallest mistake will cost you the race, even in the lowest difficulty setting, so you’re going to have to get good… and quickly! Racing around the courses is not going to be simple since they’re very bumpy, which is to be expected of a Supercross game. You really need to watch the weight distribution of your bike, moving the overall weight forward and backward depending on how you aim to land on each bump.
Since I was playing on PlayStation 5, let’s talk about some of the features afforded by Sony’s new console. The game loads very fast – faster than I expected – thanks to the power of the SSD. Everything also looks great and runs smoothly. The more I play on PlayStation 5, the easier it has become to tell the difference between playing at a consistent 60 FPS and taking on games that struggle to run at even 30 FPS. Monster Energy Supercross – The Official Videogame 4 does a good job at giving us a good 60 FPS, which is crucial for a racing game.
The other thing is the DualSense integration. The haptic feedback feels pretty solid as you ride around the course. The team also decided to use the adaptive triggers, but they might have gone a bit overboard! The adaptive triggers are regularly pushing back against you, almost too much. This made me do something I had never done before when playing a game that supports the features of the adaptive triggers: I went to the menu to turn down the overall impact from them. Be sure to give this a test and find the right setting for you!
Monster Energy Supercross – The Official Videogame 4 is the type of game that is more fun as you spend more time playing it. Given its RPG-style progress system, it’s something that can feel off-putting for some gamers, while others will feel right at home, improving their abilities as they make good use of the skill tree. The lack of a better onboarding process might be what sets this one apart from other bike racing games on Sony’s PlayStation 5, which means that your mileage with this one may vary.
Disclaimer
This Monster Energy Supercross – The Official Videogame 4 review is based on a PlayStation 5 copy provided by Koch Media.
