Expeditions: A MudRunner Game Review

thesixthaxis.com:

Sometimes, you have to ask yourself why you’re enjoying Expeditions: A MudRunner Game. Sometimes, you won’t have an answer for it, and sometimes you will. Equal parts excruciating and rewarding, Expeditions tasks you with mostly driving very slowly through places you’re not supposed to drive things. It sounds like a recipe for disaster, and one that’s going to break your teeth along the way thanks to all the rocks that have found their way in there, but it is, in fact, a tasty, wholesome meal of a game, though you’re going to have to chew your way through it from start to finish.

If you’re a newcomer to the MudRunner series, let’s make things clear: there is a lot of mud, and there is very little in the way of running. This is a series dedicated to driving, and driving well, but it couldn’t be further removed from your Gran Turismos or Need for Speeds if it tried. Setting out from your base, you’re tasked with completing a series of objectives in a host of fairly sedentary vessels, from little jeeps to huge container trucks, often carrying some kind of cargo across the map to cheer the imaginary people that live in this muddy landscape.

While the title has shifted, Expeditions is quite clearly still a MudRunner game, and while the framing is different and the outlook somewhat more sunny than its predecessors, this is still a driving game that is both in love with driving and utterly hateful of the drivers. You just so happen to be that driver.

Like the earlier games in the series, you arrive at your base camp with a can-do attitude and seemingly no knowledge of how to drive, but after a short tutorial you’ll be unleashed upon the unsuspecting landscape like the pioneer you are. Expeditions is all about adventuring into the wilderness, and while MudRunner and SnowRunner gave you the most hollow of small victories with something approaching a road or two, you’ll be navigating by cactus and crevasse in this game.

I’ve described the MudRunner series as puzzle games before,