This past weekend, at Summer Game Fest: Play Days in Los Angeles, the good people at Milestone S.r.L. and Plaion Games gave me an opportunity to play the monster truck game Monster Jam Showdown, which will be released August 29th for PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, Switch, and PC.
What follows are my impressions of this vehicular game.
With Forza Horizon 5 and Gran Turismo 7 representing the best that racing games have to offer these days, you’d think every other racing game would pale in comparison. Or at least not put out a new installment just a few weeks later. But GRID Legends (Xbox Series X/S, Xbox One, PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, PC) manages to hold its own, more or less, by having equally solid controls, good places to test them, and a nice variety of ways to do so.
Thanks to the success of such games as Super Meat Boy and the Demon Souls / Dark Souls series, there’s been a lot of interest lately in video games that are intentionally hard. But there’s a big difference between challenging and infuriating. And it’s on the wrong side of things that we find Overpass (Xbox One, PlayStation 4, PC, Switch), an off-road racing game that’s decidedly more frustrating than fun.
In anticipation of their open world racing game Forza Horizon 4 being released October 2nd on Xbox One and PC, the good people of Microsoft and Playground Games held an event last week at The Microsoft Lounge in Culver City, California where they gave journalists a chance to play the opening of the game. After doing so, I spent a few moments with Creative Director Ralph Fulton to discuss some of the things I noticed during my drive.