Like the name indicates this is the officially licensed game for Monster Energy Supercross so if you happen to be a fan of the sport feel free to bump the final score by one whole point since you will probably get more out of this one than the average Switch owner. The game does a good job portraying racers, bikes and indoor tracks which are all up to date as of last year’s season. Built on Unreal Engine and with the required down scaling from the remaining platforms it still looks the part in both docked and portable modes, in particular, the race replays look straight out of a television broadcast, including helmet cams that are so impressive it will look like you’re watching the real thing instead of a video game.
The experience is fully customisable, far beyond the expected rider’s stats, physical look, clothing and dirt bike. You can choose to play the game as an arcade experience with several assistance options on or go for full realism which will enable control modifications like manual gear shift, independent front and rear wheel brake controls and even manual rider weight shifting with the right analog stick. The controls are responsive and do a fine job of delivering the feeling of zipping across dirt hills on a bike, a definitive improvement on the previous MXGP3 offering.
You are also able to pick the length of your season, from a short single track race to a full blow 17 track racing season with realistic lap counts and the sharpest AI opponents. Monetary and experience rewards will vary depending on how much realism you pick in these racing options, with a percentage bonus being displayed for each and every option you decide to use. In short: the less arcade style you play, the more the game will reward your efforts and the easier it will be to pick all your favourite gear and bike customization parts for your virtual avatar.
Yet despite all these fine efforts, the Switch version really falls short when stacked up to the previously mentioned other version features. Present in the PS4, Xbox One and PC versions of the game is the welcome option of a track editor, 22 racers per race instead of the Switch's 12 and certainly the biggest feature cut from the handheld iteration: multiplayer. It is understandable that Milestone might not have the resources to provide the online structure that would allow the Switch version to have online multiplayer, but due to the nature of Nintendo’s console design philosophy it feels almost criminal to have absolutely no local multiplayer component in the version, something that even Excite Bike 64 provided nearly two decades ago.
There are also some issues with the in-game physics engine. In more than one occasion we performed jumps in the same fashion only to end with very distinct results; there's simply too much left to luck when it comes to pulling off a perfect landing or ending up in a complete wreck. Fortunately, this isn’t a true deal breaker if you happen to play with the rewind function turned on. Mimicking the feature we have previously seen in Gear.Club Unlimited should your current run be met with disaster, you can quickly rewind several seconds before your would-be fatal crash happens, giving you God-like powers over space and time while at the same time ensuring frustration doesn't set in.
One last word on the subject of down scaling: we caught a peculiar, reality shattering event during the post race cutscenes when our racer fails to reach the podium; You will not notice while racing that the track crew, audience and camera crews are set to low level of detail. However, this becomes very much an issue when your high detail rider is seen venting frustration for a bad performance with a very low polygon, 10 frames-per-second animated team crew member that looks more like an unfinished humanoid robot than a proper human being.
Conclusion
Monster Energy Supercross - The Official Videogame is a competent dirt bike game that will properly give you all the thrills of the real deal, in a fashion you can customize to your own liking. However, considering this game is priced as a full AAA experience, we can’t but think that all the content from the remaining versions that got cut from the Switch retail release is not enough to justify this version’s portable aspect. So buyers beware: you’re picking up a brand new dirt bike with several key components missing, which is a somewhat troublesome trend on third-party Switch releases.
Comments 34
Your telling me a game funded by a sugar coma caffeine bogan/redneck drink isn't good!? I don't believe you!
Please tell me your character can at least be shoeless and have a pack of cigarette up their sleeve....
I want it to be as true to it's nature as possible
@Shiryu Excite Back 64, sounds ominous
What a good looking game. It must be the most realistic looking game on Switch, it looks unreal.
Excite BIKE, GEAR.Club... Man, U call Yourself a journalist ?
I really hate rewind function in racing games... and in most games in general anyway.. it just makes the whole game meaningless, it makes completely pointless playing it imo
@LuckyLand Rewind helps learn a track quicker. Lost time through a bend or two? Rewind until you understand a better way to navigate it. Means you can practise without going over a whole race again.
By the time you hit the highest difficulty rewind tends not to be an option - only the good can prevail.
And it's not like you can rewind in online races, so it's a totally optional, learning, feature.
Sounds like decent game, poor port situation. Any chance of multiplayer in an update?
@Bunkerneath Freudian slip.
@premko1 Wow, this journalist needs to sleep more. Even worse, I own both games!
@LuckyLand but you don't have to use it. It's not forced on the player
@kobashi100 the problem is my willpower is extremely weak I'm not able to disregard functions like those when they are available and there's not even an option to turn them off.
Also when a game works like that if I use such functions I feel like the game is stupid, if I don't use them I can't help but feel like I am stupid, so the game is ruined either way for me.
Such a waste not having local multiplayer in this game.
So the Switch is starting to turn in to the Wii U with all these bad/ gimped third party ports of games. It's no wonder that I only buy Nintendo consoles for Nintendo games and purchase the third party games elsewhere.
Thanks for the review Shiryu! Some of us are mature enough to look past a few minor typos made in your second (or third) language to the substance of your very learned opinions. Shame this one is a stinker; looking for next racing experience having completed the underrated Gear.Club. The
The review sounded like a 7 or 8. Not a 6.
although the game does look good the lack of any kind of multiplayer is almost unforgivable to me
@Cosats I can't in good conscience give a 7/10 after seeing the other versions in action. Much less for the current €£$60 price point.
This game is an embarrassment, and I say this as someone who usually loves Milestone's games on other platforms. I bought MXGP 3 which was the motocross game released by Milestone just before this and it was so poorly optimized for the Switch that the game is barely playable. A lot of people say it looks like a PS2 game and I would have to agree with them. Even compared to the PS3 and Xbox 360 versions of MXGP it looks awful, with no effects for the track, a reduced grid count, no online or multiplayer, and low quality effort all around. Monster Energy Supercross is a repeat of this with the same exact treatment. I honestly think a 6/10 is being very generous. If you don't believe me just see it for yourself:
https://youtu.be/ds8B5Yu3VZ4
@gcunit I doubt this game will ever get patched. They never released an update for MXGP 3 so I doubt they will ever release an update for this game as well. Milestone doesn't seem like they are concerned with delivering a good game on the Switch and they definitely don't seem to be supporting them either.
Well it looks like I'll be skipping this one until it hits a lower price. There were reasons I was a little skeptical on buying it early, glad I went with Bayonetta instead.
Review is fine - I agree on the score - possibly even a 5 - but seriously Nintendolife - don’t get me wrong I like your site, but reading your articles is sometimes similar to reading a facebook post :
“we can’t but think that all the content from the remaining versions that got cut from the Switch retail release is not enough to justify this version’s portable aspect”
Missing a word then completely messing up the grammar, all in one sentence? The amount they cut is ‘not enough’ - you want them to cut ‘MORE’ to justify it?!? I don’t think that’s what you meant. =P Please... get an editor/proof reader.
@gcunit That's true. You can't rewind in online matches...because there are NO online matches in this game. XD
@KeeperBvK Of course there's online matches, just use your imagination.
I'd get this if it had online multiplayer. I'm not buying any game that takes out the online for a Switch release.
@FTL ... if only you knew how incredibly hard I try to make all my jobs work...
@Shiryu. haha sounds like you need a few volunteers Like I said, good work on the review though!
@FTL I need a whole clone army of Shiryus. Sadly world domination would ensue and there would be 6/10s for everyone, 24/7, all the time, every time.
@Shiryu
Good job on the review mate, just a word of advice:
the "conclusion" section isn't worded correctly, you'd better edit that. For the sentence to make sense you should switch (hehe) "portable aspect blabla" at the beginning for "all the content blablabla" at the end. It'd still be weirdly worded (better to rewrite it, imo) but at least it would make sense.
@DashKappei Lets see what we can see...
I don’t get it? What do you mean to see what we can see?
It was just my own 2 cents mate, of course you can leave it as it pleases you
@Shiryu hello! By any chance do you know if they patched the game since release.... I’m tempted to get it but it’s few well documented issues put me off
@Stocksy Nope.
@DashKappei Sorry for the very late reply, I somehow was not notified of this one. You see once a review gets published, only Editors have the right to edit it. as such I was unable to edit and revise any text in it, it was up to the editors to take a look and change anything after it gets published. this continues to be true even nowadays, so once a Review is set to Live, author can no longer directly edit them.
@Shiryu cheers mate. I’ll hold off for a price drop as no excuse for this version to both be lacking in content compared to PS4/Xbox and also lacking support too... if NBA can manage to be a full console experience and play smooth (after patches) then this should too especially at the price - that being said from what I’ve seen your score is still about right - it’s just the game could and should have been more.
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