BattleTrucks

I went into BattleTrucks with pretty reasonable expectations for a budget arcade combat racer, and came out the other side with a list of warnings longer than the game's content. The premise is solid fun on paper: pick a hulking truck, get on a track, and bash or blast your way past opponents to the finish line. Russian vehicle fans will get a kick out of the roster, which includes recognisable names like the KAMAZ, GAZ, GAZ-3307, GAZ-66, and the URAL. That is genuinely the most interesting thing BattleTrucks has going for it, and also the entire extent of its personality. The physics leans hard into arcade territory, which is not automatically a bad thing for a game in this lane. Casual players and anyone who just wants to bounce trucks off each other should technically find the handling accessible. The damage system is pitched as having some realism to it, and in brief stretches you can see what BattleGames was trying to do: something like a cut-price Twisted Metal on wheels. The problem is that the execution rarely keeps pace with the concept. AI opponents are aggressive but not particularly intelligent, and the track variety is thin enough that the loop wears out faster than a bald tyre. Here is where things get actively bad for anyone reading this in 2025 and beyond. The multiplayer, which is arguably the whole reason the game was tagged "Massively Multiplayer" at launch, has been functionally dead for a long time. Players in the Steam forums are reporting server connection failures and have even started petitions to get online play restored. There is no split-screen and no local co-op, which kills any hope of running this at a group session. As a solo experience it has maybe an hour of novelty before the thin content loop repeats itself to numbness. The Linux version is its own separate disaster: community reports confirm it ships Windows executable files and simply does not run on Linux at all, despite the platform listing. From a hardware perspective, there is nothing here that needs a wheel or pedals. A gamepad handles fine, but the game does not seem to have been tuned with any particular input method in mind. The minimum spec is ancient by any standard, so at least it will run on modest hardware without complaint. The Steam trading cards exist, five of them, so badge hunters will get that much out of it. That is a pretty thin silver lining. For the "four friends on the couch" test that I always run in my head: BattleTrucks scores a flat zero. No local multiplayer, broken online, minimal content. Even the most forgiving casual crowd will clock the emptiness within a sitting. If you want vehicular combat racing that actually works, GRIP: Combat Racing and Heavy Metal Machines both do this job properly and have active player bases. BattleTrucks is a curio at best, a cautionary tale at worst, and the 36% Steam rating is doing it no favours. Riley, Scout Team

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