Expeditions: A MudRunner Game – The First Preview

ign.com:

As you can probably tell from the name, Expeditions: A MudRunner Game is an extension of MudRunner and SnowRunner’s uniquely slow-paced brand of off-road driving simulation. These open-world trucking sims turn their swampy sandboxes into complex puzzles that will suck your hapless trucks into their boggy bowels if you make a bad decision, or overestimate the capabilities of your vehicle. The core of Expeditions is different – shelving the heavy trucking aspect and focusing instead on navigation and exploration – but the spirit is the same. That is, stay upright, don’t get stuck, and if in doubt, winch your way out.

After a few hours with Expeditions, it’s clear that this spin-off hasn’t strayed far from the MudRunner/SnowRunner wheelhouse. It feels and looks largely the same, the controls are mostly unchanged, and it’s underpinned by the same physics-based, deformable ground materials. Thick mud slops around the struggling tyres. Water ripples and churns as engines vibrate and wheels spin beneath the surface. It remains great stuff.

However, Expeditions carves its own path when it comes to its objectives. While scouting in smaller vehicles is something both MudRunner and SnowRunner support, they’re mostly about moving bulky cargo and building materials from facility to facility with the toughest trucks this side of Tonka. The handful of missions I’ve played in Expeditions indicate a shift away from that.

Expeditions still casts us as experienced, off-road truckers, but here we’re part of a research team as opposed to a dedicated trucking company. So far in Expeditions I’ve spent my time delivering scientific equipment, discovering new sites and effective routes, and rescuing drowned trucks that have conked out following