Expeditions: A MudRunner Game Preview – The zen and the adventurous

thesixthaxis.com:

As you carefully trundle over a particularly difficult outcropping of rocks and find yourself staring at a horrifically steep drop in the middle of the video game wilderness, there are three possible solutions. The MudRunner way would have you turn around and try to find a different, more sensible way around, or you could embrace the Forza Horizon way and launch yourself off it, resulting in the doom and destruction of your vehicle. Finally, and quite unexpectedly, you attach your jeep to a nearby rock and abseil down the rock face. Yes. Abseil. A jeep. This would be the Expeditions way.

Announced at Gamescom’s Opening Night Live, Expeditions: A MudRunner Game might have had a few fans of the series worried. Gone are the long-haul trucks with their ponderous trailers full of cargo, and gone are the distinct tracks and roads of civilisation. At first glance, and with the newly updated MudRunner engine, you could mistake this for a run of the mill open world driving/racing game. Thankfully, that couldn’t be further from the truth – the MudRunner DNA is present and correct, and if you weren’t sure at first glance, then the subtitle tells you everything you need to know.

MudRunner, and it’s excellent sequel SnowRunner, should be amongst the most frustrating driving game experiences of all time. They task you with driving sensibly. They task you with driving slowly. And they task you with doing so across terrain that is often thoroughly inhospitable to wheeled vehicles. But – and this is a big, hulking but – somehow this is a series that brings its players a place of calm, a place of zen, and which focuses you on one simple question: how do I get over there?

Expeditions pulls off the same thing trick, though it drops players