Monster Energy Supercross 25

Monster Energy Supercross 25 was provided by Milestone S.r.l. for review. Thank you!

When it comes to Supercross games, your choices are pretty limited, with the main choices being THQ Nordic's MX vs ATV series and Milestone's Monster Energy Supercross series. Fortunately, Monster Energy Supercross 25 is a decent entry into Milestone's series. While it may not offer a huge step-up from previous entries, it's a great entry point for newcomers.

Monster Energy Supercross 25 offers a variety of game modes. Quick play lets you do a single event to play one-off sessions or a tournament, and these have adjustable session length, difficulty, and weather conditions.

Rhythm Attack lets you play a 1V1, essentially the bike equivalent of a drag race, a Time Attack mode to practice your riding, and a Championship mode, which lets you make up your championships with custom settings and choose your tracks. There is split-screen for two local players, but I wouldn't recommend that on the Steam Deck due to the extra system resources it will require, and online modes to race against friends wherever you are.

However, the main mode is the career mode, which has all the usual trappings of the modern career system in these games, complete with the somewhat silly fake social media system allowing you to interact with fellow drivers and fans. On the plus side, you can research upgrades to your bike and improve it, and the current contract you have with a team offers neat little objectives for you to aim for as you progress through the races, as well as a level/rank system to give a sense of progression, too.

Finally, there is the track editor, which lets you create tracks in the stadiums, although it is more basic. The game does have Steam Workshop support, so you can share and download community tracks, too.

Now, onto the most important part of Monster Energy Supercross 25: the riding physics and control. Well, if you choose advanced physics, it would be quite decent. It requires the player to exercise good weight distribution, throttle control, and track positioning to have any hope of succeeding. You'll need to steer carefully to avoid sliding and falling off. It's pretty brutal, but ideal for experienced players.

If you're a more casual player or new to the concept of dirt bikes, you might want to opt for simplified physics. This controls more like an arcade game, being much more forgiving with how you have to control the bike. You will still have to drive well and pick the right driving line to beat the AI, but you're less likely to fall off, and you don't have to worry about distributing your weight as much mid-air.

The downside of the simplified physics mode is that it can sometimes act a little oddly, allowing the bike to make some erratic movements, like quickly spinning around at low speed, and sometimes your driver kind of sticks to the bike instead of flying off.

However, either mode airs more on the "simulation" side than the "arcade" side of racing. You will need fine control and understanding of the game's physics to ride well. Steering hard and accelerating on either mode will cause the bike to spin and throw you off, for example.

Much like the riding, the AI in the game is quite difficult. Even on the "Very Easy" setting, winning wasn't guaranteed. I generally placed in the top 3 but was never more than 5 seconds ahead of the pack. The game also slightly suffers from "Mario Kart Syndrome", where it seems to pick a driver significantly faster than all the others to challenge you. It's not uncommon to see 1 AI rider with a fastest lap 2-3 seconds faster than any other AI rider.

The AI difficulty is adjustable, with five settings, so if you are a pro at these kinds of games, you should still find a setting that poses a challenge. Still, newcomers or people not used to racing games might find it frustrating to win a race even in the easiest settings.

The environments vary a little, but they are, for the most part, based in stadiums on your standard Supercross tracks, meaning many of them can kind of blend together in your mind. There are some exceptions, though, with some tracks in outdoor environments more akin to a Motocross race.

Visually, Monster Energy Supercross 25 holds up quite well, even on the lower settings you're restricted to on the Steam Deck. The ground changes texture and material depending on the weather, and grooves form in the mud as bikes wear down the terrain. Although this is mostly visual, there are plenty of crowds to build the atmosphere.

As for the audio, there's a lot of bike revving, as you would imagine, and it can get a bit much after a while. The music in the game is also quite "noisy," just heavy drums and guitars. It almost sounds like it's overloading the speakers sometimes, and it isn't all that nice an experience, so you might want to fine-tune the audio levels yourself.

Monster Energy Supercross 25 - Steam Deck Performance

Monster Energy Supercross 25 supports 16:10 resolutions and good controller support; controllers are the best way to play the game.

Regarding performance, we have to aim for 30 FPS with this one, but we can get away with a few visual features. Most of the settings are on "Low" (instead of "Off"), so we do get some niceties like reflections and ambient occlusion. I also lowered the resolution to 1152x720 as it gains us the 2 or 3 FPS needed to keep a more stable 30 FPS. We're using the in-game frame limiter here, not the SteamOS one.

Using these settings, the game hits 30 FPS most of the time. At the start of races, the frame rate can dip to around 28 FPS, but it picks up within a few seconds as the grid of bikes separates. Surprisingly, the game is more CPU-heavy than GPU-heavy, so the main aim of lowering graphical settings is to free up power for the CPU.

Very occasionally, there are some serious stutters, where the game may freeze for around 250- 500ms; it only tends to happen once per track, but it is quite jarring. For this reason, I would be hesitant about playing online on the Steam Deck, as the slightly unstable framerate and occasional stutters might present issues in online play.

The power draw with these settings is higher, mostly due to the CPU, which ranges between 18W and 21W in most races, dropping to around 15-16W in the 1V1 races. Temperatures are also fairly high, being around 65C-75C. Expect about 2.5 hours of battery life on a Steam Deck OLED and around 1.5 hours on a Steam Deck LCD.

Accessibility:

The main accessibility features of the game involve simplifying riding. You can automate things like gear changes and weight distribution, and use simpler physics that are less punishing when taking turns or landing jumps. You can also increase the font size in menus, which I did by one notch for the Steam Deck, because my eyes are trash. You can also apply a colorblind filter and lower the game speed, effectively playing in slow motion to help with reaction times.

Conclusion:

Monster Energy Supercross 25 is a solid entry into the series, with plenty to keep you busy as a solo player and in online modes. Some riding physics can seem slightly off at low speeds, but it generally holds up and offers a suitable challenge. The AI is unforgivingly brutal, but for seasoned players, this should be a blast; newcomers might need a bit more time to get up to speed.

Performance on the Steam Deck is at least playable; we have to keep settings low and play at 30 FPS, but the game is playable, at least in the offline modes. Controller support is excellent.

Our review is based on the PC version of this game.

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