Everyone loves monster trucks. They're big, they're bad, and they're lots of fun. Add smashing cars and wanton destruction to that, and you've got a definite winner by any standards. And that's just what the Monster Truck Trips give you, the ability to smash smaller cars, exciting levels, death-defying stunts, and all sorts of other monster trucky goodness.

Sure, Monster Truck Trip plays a whole lot like other games where you your ride about by accelerating and decelerating while controlling the angle of your care by tilting your ride (who knows how it's done, I'm not mechanical engineer. Just say that magical pneumatic gremlins do it, it's as good an explanation as any.) forwards and backwards to control how you hit the ground and how you jump. Still, as many of these games as there are out there, it's always good fun to play one that gets it right. And the Monster Truck Trip games do indeed get it right.

The truck graphics in the games is fairly standard, with nothing really special to write home about. Still, they're pleasant enough to look at, and there's nothing too jarring about them. They do their job well, and the animations are fairly spiffy. But again, nothing that will really wow anyone.

Of positive note though is the detail that goes into the background. With games like these, too often is the background just some solid color, or some nifty little texture which, while certainly serving their purpose well enough, aren't really all that visually appealing. The Monster Truck Trip games go that extra distance by having detailed backdrops with distinguishable details and features. You'll see farmhouses in the distance, tumbleweed lying around, maybe an abandoned still beside a mountain, or what have you. What's more, the foreground has a similar level of detail. The cars trucks themselves might not anything special, but there's a great level of detail and things to look at in the level design.

And speaking of level design, you won't be getting any boring tracks here. Everything is well laid out, ramps are placed here and there at just the right locations to make for some really interesting (and utterly improbable) jumps, and there are never any boring patches where the tracks is a simple straight run. You'll even be able to interact with the terrain at certain points, moving beams to create a bridge, pushing things to create ramps, etc... This is in addition, of course, to the interactions you'll normally be doing while smashing things apart.

To deal with these tracks, you'll be able to upgrade your ride in the games, adding better tires, improved nitrous, a snazzier paint job, etc... You'll start out in these games with a dinky little monster truck, and eventually wind up with a truly monstrous monster truck that lives up to the name and more.

So what are you waiting for? The world of monster trucks awaits you with the Monster Truck Trip games, go on and get perform some gratuitous vehicular destruction! less