Monster Energy Supercross 25 – The Official Video Game Review – Between a Rut and a Hard Place

The niche bike racer is back after taking last year off with the rebooted Monster Energy Supercross 25. Billed as a reboot of the series, Supercross 25 lacks the kind of sweeping changes and enhancements that many fans were asking for, as we’ll get into. That said, is Monster Energy Supercross 25 the definitive game in the series and is it worth shelling out $59.99 for? Let’s explore what the newest entry in the supercross franchise has to offer.

The most important thing to mention right out of the gate is how the bike feels to control. Supercross 25 is a neat mix of arcade and sim bike racing. You can’t just haphazardly careen into corners like this is Excitebike or Mario Kart or you’ll faceplant into the dirt. Like past Supercross games, there’s a dual stick approach to controlling your bike here. The left stick steers and tilts the bike backward or forward while the right stick adjusts the rider’s body weight, leaning in and out of turns. Managing the weight you put into turns is crucial in order to maintain traction and avoid slipping out. It’s worth pointing out that this is not a trick-heavy game. It’s encouraged that players perform whips and scrubs in order to angle oncoming turns better, but there’s little more extreme sports flair than that.

What I do find satisfying though is pulling the bike weight back through whoops, which are basically consecutive bumps. The added DualSense rumble enhances the viscerality of the different track conditions well. Managing flow through repeated jumps and corners is an aspect that can find you equally frustrated or satisfied, and it’s something Supercross 25 carries over from the real sport reasonably well.

"Managing the weight you put into turns is crucial in order to maintain traction and avoid slipping out."

One thing that enhances Supercross 25’s sense of realism are the ruts and deformation that change on the dirt terrain. I thought at first this marketed feature was a gimmick, but the evolving ruts around the tracks really do force the rider to pay attention to the ground every single lap. I bailed a number of times due to deep ruts sliding my bike off my line. This new terrain deformation feature further leans the series into a sim-like identity in a positive way.

Like ruts, weather also plays a part in managing bike stability. You can manually set weather conditions for outdoor tracks, though Career events have pre-established track conditions. I didn’t notice weather changing during races, but it’s nice that rainy conditions do cause notable slippage to not just the player but AI.

While I appreciate how ruts and weather add to a more in-depth racing experience, I can’t say the same for the turning and cornering physics. Whether you’re going through a tight hairpin or doing micro adjustments, turning just doesn’t feel intuitive or fun. Yes, turning the wheels on a bike going 45 MPH through heavy dirt in real life isn’t exactly the most intuitive thing in the world, but the game doesn’t replicate it well enough to justify how understeery turn-ins are. No matter the bike, it always feels like I’m fighting a battle of initial understeer and then snap oversteer to correct it. Just staying on track can be a difficult and frustrating ordeal for beginners. Players that didn’t care for the physics of Supercross 6 likely aren’t going to love this one either; the stiffness is largely the same as before.

"You can manually set weather conditions for outdoor tracks, though Career events have pre-established track conditions."

But while the understeer and oversteer of the bikes is a more subjective critique, the stiff animations are unquestionably average at best. In a lot of ways, the rider’s rigid movements look almost identical to past entries. I mean, just look mid-air body animations, there’s hardly any body movement at all, even when shifting weight. The team haven’t done much to improve animations in this title, which ends up taking away from the general graphical improvements. The game does look good, especially with the rain puddles and the changing dirt formations on the tracks. This is the first Unreal Engine 5 game in the series, after all. Though there’s still a lack of viscerality here. I’m disappointed by the lack of mud splashing and loose rider movement in particular, things that UE5 could’ve helped added.

Speaking of tracks, this game supplies a decent collection of them. Despite the same number as the last iteration (with 17), new tracks like Glendale Stadium are a welcome addition. And for outdoor fans, there’s a total of 13 tracks that allow weather customization. The number of riders has shrunk from the 80 of the previous game to just 65. A slight reduction of content is fine since this is something of a reboot, but there’s just not enough variety in bike/rider feel here to really offset that. Every rider feels the same to control, and the only difference in bikes is the sound and stats.

"The rider’s rigid movements look almost identical to past entries."

But let’s get into what we use these bikes for and check out the various game modes. First, the tutorials. This time around, instead of the tutorial being tacked onto the Career, it’s tucked away in a separate menu. Why they decided a reboot was the perfect time to hide away the Supercross Academy tutorial is beyond me. As a fairly new supercross player myself, I found the learning process of this mode lackluster. They did the bare minimum with tutorialization, just giving a checklist of stuff to accomplish without any explanation of concepts or advanced controls. If you want an actual explanation of what ‘whoops’ are, you have to go to a separate text menu for more in-depth explanations. I do not recommend this game for newcomers to the supercross racing game world. The onboarding is almost non-existent and the tutorialization is poor.

The Online Hub wasn’t available during the review phase, but from what we know, it’s similar how it was with Supercross 6. Thankfully, offline split-screen is available if you don’t have a PS Online or Xbox Live membership. Single Event, Rhythm Attack, Time Attack, and Championship make up the single-player modes. If you want to get your creative juices flowing, there’s the Workshop which allow custom suit graphics, bike liveries, and custom tracks with the track editor.

I’ve messed with plenty of track editors in my days, but this one is especially unintuitive and basic . First off, there’s just not that many fun options to experiment with. You have two outdoor and two indoor stadiums to select from and you cannot zoom in or out with the camera as you’re editing. While I’m okay with the variety of straights and jumps types, the size tool is pathetic. Jumps only have three size options to select from, all of which are laughably marginal. Want to make a 20 foot tall jump? Well, too bad; it’s either a tiny bump or a regular jump for you. And why can’t we alter the size of walls or step-up tables? I see little reason to bother with the track editor considering the scant amount of options it gives the player.

"There’s just not that many fun options to experiment with in this track editor."

No matter what mode you engage with, you’re always gaining some experience to progress bikes and riders further. Every level-up rewards a specific part or bike used. The reward progression structure is identical to most live service seasonal rotations, but without the ‘live service’ element. I just can’t help feeling like publishers are getting creatively complacent regarding progression systems, merely settling with copying the live service template even when the game isn’t a live service, but I digress.

Finally, there’s Career Mode. You won’t find anything groundbreaking here if you’ve played any sports game in the last decade as it mostly follows the same formula. You begin your supercross journey at the ‘Futures’ category with no reputation or following. Place within the top 15 of the following races and you’ll be catapulted into the ‘Rookie’ category with the choice to join a team within the 250 East or 250 West division. Opportunities will arise as you race to get other teams interested in partnering with you. The overdone social media aspect plays a role in Career too, with the number of followers affecting reputation. Complete objectives and finish well in races and your followers go up. Oh yeah, and you get DM’d by other riders and media with options to troll them or get in their good graces. I’m admittedly tired of the low effort recycling of career modes in sports games and, well, Supercross 25 isn’t giving me any optimism for the future in that regard. The social media Career stuff is rote and superficial at this point.

"A high team synergy pushes your Bike Development further, improving various stats."

Team synergy is at least somewhat interesting, though it’s been done in dozens of sports games for now. A high team synergy pushes your Bike Development further, improving various stats within the Speed, Acceleration, Handling, and Braking categories. Different teams emphasize certain stats more than others, and of course allow you to ride their particular bike brand.

You move up in Career through a series seasons composed of ‘Acts’. I like how there’s a rival for each act that berates you in DMs and performs aggressively during races. Oh yeah, and the AI in general is somewhat improved from the last game, but only slightly. Racers still brainlessly jump on your head and crash into you due to unintelligent pathing. Even on harder difficulties, they don’t move out of the way or alter their line, though they do flow much better and are hard to beat if you’re not experienced.

I wanted to love a bike game again and was hoping Supercross 25 would do it, but it has a physics model that isn’t fun or intuitive to engage with. I think there’s something to enjoy here if you’re a supercross fan and can get over the initial difficulty curve, but for everyone else, there’s not much here. The game leans in a more sim-like direction with the enhanced track deformation, but doesn’t manage to feel satisfying to master due to awkward physics and lackluster AI.

This game was reviewed on the PlayStation 5.