There’s suddenly a shocking amount of videogames based on toy cars recently – the excellent Hot Wheels Unleashed series, the recent Matchbox title, and now another Hot Wheels game, this time based on the Monster Truck series. The result is a kid-friendly title named Hot Wheels Monster Trucks: Stunt Mayhem, and here’s our review on Xbox Series X!
Fitting the big wheels on again
I’m having a déjà-vu here, because it feels like yesterday that I reviewed a very similar game. Indeed, just about a month and a half ago, we published our review for the surprisingly addictive Monster Jam Showdown. That game, like Hot Wheels Monster Trucks: Stunt Mayhem (what a mouthful), predominantly focuses on giving us big trucks with absurdly large wheels, as the player is tasked with pulling off the wildest stunts – flipping, bouncing, doing donuts and so forth with these peculiar vehicles.
Showdown wasn’t the first, and certainly won’t be the last such game either, but its recency certainly provides an interesting reference point. Behind the project is Italian developer 3DClouds, whom you may remember both from their original racers like Xenon Racer and All-Star Fruit Racing or, more recently, the PAW Patrol titles. It perhaps won’t come as a surprise then, that Stunt Mayhem is also a kid-friendly, relatively simple and very accessible game, without any ambition to deliver the most advanced physics models or the most realistic of handling.
This approach is immediately clear when entering the mud-filled stadium’s inside for the first time, as we get to drive in these stunt zones full of ramps, destructible objects, rings on fire and other peculiar, Hot Wheels-themed stunts. The handling is very arcade, with a quite simple physics model, extremely responsive controls and nothing “sim-like” in the experience: forget any kind of damage, manual transmission or anything fancy like that. The amount of tricks at our disposal isn’t too high, and the game doesn’t reward variety all that much, so you’ll find yourself repeating many of the more simple tricks like backflips and donuts a lot.
I wanna, wanna, wanna take it to the basics
Of course, that isn’t to say there is no challenge whatsoever in here. Keep a donut for too long, and the truck might just roll over. Rotate too much in the air or have a landing too rough, and it doesn’t take long for the vehicle to go upside down. Since the goal of the game is usually to score high, and do so by chaining together radical stunts via lenghty combos, having the truck fall on the wrong side kills said combo, severely impacting our chances of getting a great result.
In truth, despite a solid challenge in keeping the combos, Hot Wheels Monster Trucks: Stunt Mayhem is quite forgiving in terms of difficulty. Score objectives and timers tend to be quite generous, with an experienced gamer like me often being able to complete everything I needed to do in a level after like one third of the elapsed time if I played well. If I flipped my truck a couple times, it was a bit closer, yet still doable.
If anything, the difficulty (that doesn’t have different settings) comes out in the single player campaign in the form of multiple challenges to beat at once. For example, not only scoring a certain amount of points, but also destroying a 50, 60, even 70% of the items across the map. Reaching these individual objectives is usually not that hard, though sometimes they do require a decent understanding of the arena’s layout, but having only a couple minutes to do all of them at the same time can be a bit tricky. Fortunately, you can go back to complete anything that remains separately, as none of the goals are mandatory to finish together.
Your kid’s safe
It really wouldn’t be a Hot Wheels videogame, without it presenting actual real life toys to drive. Various classics like the Crushzilla can be used, each with different visual variants. Each vehicle has 3 different skins, which can be unlocked via special events in the campaign. Wanna go beyond the campaign? Well, there’s not much else unfortunately. Solo events can be played with barely any customization of the rules, and then there’s multiplayer… which is down to the local play and for only two players. It’s a fun game, don’t get me wrong, but if you were hoping to go beyond the campaign, there’s not a lot there. Another bit of a shame is that the visuals are rather stale, with a handful of technical glitches and late-loading textures from time to time as well. The presentation gets the job done, but it’s nothing special all in all.
Hot Wheels Monster Trucks: Stunt Mayhem is a simple stunt game, not really a racer, as players have to do flips, donuts, smash stuff and so forth with these giant-wheeled behemoths in Hot Wheels fashion. It lacks the depth or variety of most Monster Truck games on console, and in particular the lack of any race modes is a bit disappointing, but the focus on younger audiences and a forgiving difficulty should make for a decent Hot Wheels experience, for those that seek such a game. The lack of almost any multiplayer, aside from the 2-player local play is a big bummer for the longevity of the game, but if you want an enjoyable solo romp to run through, it’s a good time.
Hot Wheels Monster Trucks: Stunt Mayhem
Played on
Xbox Series X
PROS
- The stunt system is fun
- Accessible for all ages
- A lot of iconic Hot Wheels trucks
CONS
- Only local multiplayer, limited to 2 players
- Limited variety
- Basic presentation
