Monster Energy Supercross 25 Review: Time To Fly Again?

Milestone is back with Monster Energy Supercross 25, the official game of the AMA Supercross Championship. Was the break to skip a 2024 entry worth it for the new game? Let's find out in our Monster Energy Supercross 25 review.

Milestone took a year off making Supercross games but they’ve now returned with Monster Energy Supercross 25. There are some pretty interesting changes with this year’s game, like dynamic ruts, and a move to Unreal Engine 5. I’ve been playing it for the last few days to see how the new game turned out, so let’s see if it’s worth picking up.

Supercross 25 is based off the AMA Supercross Championship in America. In case you weren’t aware, this series is huge in the US: Viewership-wise, it has similar numbers to IndyCar - so a lot of people watch it. The series focuses on motocross racing on short stadium-sized tracks, meaning there are less wide-open straights and highspeed corners, but lots of hairpins and lots of jumps.

For Supercross as a racing game, that means that it plays quite differently compared to others. It's not really about racing lines, braking points and elements like that. Instead, it's mostly about how to take jumps in an optimal pattern for speed. There are a lot of things you can do on the ground to be fast, such as using the banking of corners to your advantage. But the majority of time can be gained in the air.

Monster Energy Supercross 25 Content​

Included in this game are riders from the 250cc East and West, and the 450cc AMA Supercross championships, and all the tracks from the current season are present as well. New in this game - and it is kind of wild that the previous games didn’t include it for their respective seasons - is the current season with accurate layouts for each track. Milestone’s said they will update this as the season progresses, if there are any small changes.

Along with these tracks there are some other fictional motocross tracks included, and some straight line rhythm races - including one in the shadow of the space shuttle.

Getting To Grips With A Different Type Of Racing​

It is probably worth mentioning before we get further into the review that I have not played the previous games in this series. I have played Motocross Madness and too many hours of MTX Mototrax. I also watched a fair few videos about the previous games and these motocross YouTubers make it look easy, so I thought I’d smash it.

I did not. I am terrible at this game, and I also have that racing driver problem where I just outright refuse to lower the difficulty or introduce rider aids. I do not recommend this, you should lower the difficulty. I eventually did, and I had a much better afterwards.

Anyway, as I have not played the previous games, this isn’t a 1-to-1 comparison from the last game a few years ago, but from someone a little newer to the series.

In terms of difficulty from before, it’s worth acknowledging this next to Milestone’s MotoGP games. Both Supercross and MotoGP are super difficult in my opinion. They are probably the hardest console racers that you will play, and it’s worth being aware of that. I find these games really challenging, but satisfying to get right.

Handling & Physics​

Handling wise, there are multiple ways to manipulate your bike into doing what you want - and the game is fairly good at telling you what you can do via in tutorial Supercross Academy. It will tell you how to do everything, but it won’t tell you why you should do it. And that is something that I really struggled with.

I actually ended up looking up some YouTube videos of the previous game for tips and tricks on how to be fast in this game, because the game just does not tell you. It says you can use the right stick to move your rider weight, but should you be leaning into corners or rather away from them?. I eventually picked up the preload system - sort of - because I had played motocross games from ages ago where you lean back on the way into a jump and lean forward off the lip to fly further. But the game does not tell you this, it sort of just assumes you know it.

There are also whips and scrubs, and using the rear brake in corners, and Supercross 25 tells you how to do these things - just not when. It’s actually really difficult to time your rhythm correctly over jumps. And I am sure it is easier if you know how to use all these tools to your benefit.

Turning the rider aids on will make these automatic, which is great and generally non-invasive, so everyone can play. But I kind of wanted to learn how to get better and do it myself. If you are a big supercross fan you probably know all of this already, so that’s not an issue for you. But for me, it was.

I encountered a few glitchy bits in the physics as well. One example,if you do a quick 180 your bike kind of rockets backwards at very high speed which is quite funny. Otherwise the bike physics felt good. They have apparently been completely overhauled since the previous game, including counterbalancing the bike weight in corners. Which I ended up doing a lot of, as well as keeping the weight backwards a lot of the time.

Something new to this game are dynamic ruts in the track, the coolest new feature in this year’s game in my opinion. The ruts appear over a race as each corner gets cut up. It’s frustrating to ride on at points, and it does sometimes feel slightly buggy. But honestly, they are still awesome. It makes me feel like playing Sega Rally Revo for the first time with the track deformation. On the last lap of the race there is often just huge banks of dirt in the middle of corners, and if you go up on them you fall off your bike. This a great feature!

Visuals​

Another new part is the move to Unreal Engine 5. Now this means the game should look better, but from looking at footage from the previous game. I honestly am not sure if it does. It definitely looks different, especially the lighting. It almost feels foggier, for the lack of a better word.

Generally though, a lot of things look quite good in this game. From a distance, the stadium features look cool, and the cloth physics on the riders are fairly good, and the bikes look nice too. At the same time, it feels like there is a tiny lack of polish in some ways. The fireworks leading into a race look good, but also very 2008-ish at the same time.

My feeling with this game is that the stadiums are missing a tiny bit of atmosphere as well. I’m not sure what it is, maybe there could be more NPCs around the track. The places feel slightly dead at times, like you are in a deserted stadium with a crowd GIF pasted around the edges. On the topic of NPCs though, when you crash, the marshalls wave yellow flags which is realistic and nice that it has been put in the game.

Monster Energy Supercross 25 AI​

The AI in singleplayer has been worked on for this game, and it is sometimes very good, and sometimes less so. For starters, they get in your way all the time, similar to the MotoGP games. This is a good thing, so it is not like the EA F1 games where the AI will brake and stop the car to avoid you. But it is also really annoying when you keep landing on other riders.

The AI also has a perfect reaction time to the gate dropping, but their bikes seemingly all have just 4 horsepower down the start straight, so it is quite easy to get the holeshot. I played on hard difficulty when I started, and I was getting podiums in the futures class. When I went to 250cc, I was suddenly about five seconds off the pace in last. Once I dropped the difficulty down to medium, it felt a bit better.

Otherwise the AI seems okay. To be honest, in this kind of racing it feels more like I am racing the track than the other riders, so I am not making passing moves under brakes or defending - I’m just riding past them. And for that, the AI seemed okay. Especially since a complaint from previous games was that the AI was too easy. Apparently on max difficulty they are a lot harder now. I cannot verify this myself, but I am excited to see what the pros think.

Multiplayer​

This game has full crossplay for multiplayer, which is great. Controller is the way to play this game, so it’s a level playing field for everyone, even Supercross players on PC. I have not tried multiplayer during the review period, as the game was not out yet, and there was no one to race with.

But I will say there’s a very dedicated Supercross community, and I am sure if you reach out a bit, you will easily be able to find people to race against. Milestone has planned 12 months of ranked multiplayer seasons, each having a different theme, rewards, and a leaderboard reset.

Career Mode​

You will likely spend the bulk of your time in Monster Energy Supercross 25 in the Career Mode. There, you start in a fictional futures series, then move up to the 250 then 450cc championships. It is similar to the MotoGP games where you have different acts over a few races and are given goals to beat certain riders. There is also a bike improvement feature where you get your team to improve certain parts. And of course, there is a social media feature, where you have to pick the most antagonistic response possible whenever someone @’s you.

Like in other milestone games you can customise a huge amount of stuff on your bike and rider. There are a bunch of included things to put on your butt patch which are very funny as well.

Additionally, there is a full course editor in this game. I tried, and I am not creative enough for this. But it is pretty powerful, and you can certainly create some funky tracks with it.

Verdict​

I enjoyed my time playing Monster Energy Supercross 25, and I am excited to get stuck into it more after its release. For fans of the sport, I am sure it is excellent to get all the official riders and tracks. For me, I found it difficult to ride, and a little frustrating in some ways to get the rhythm down. When I do nail it and get a really close race for the win, it does feel pretty good, however. Overall, I give it 3 out of 5 stars.

What are your impressions of Monster Energy Supercross 25? Are you looking forward to the game yourself? Let us know in the comments below!