Mudrunner & Snowrunner, the Runner games, are near and dear to my heart. They are essentially truck-based driving puzzle games. How do you get from point A to point B with a few different objectives along the way. Expeditions takes that formula and adds more structure to it. Guardrails, if you will. It’s massive, occasionally gorgeous, and a ton of fun. It’s still weird, occasionally extremely difficult, and not for everyone. Let’s break down this oddly wonderful title.
Expeditions
The big change in the game is right there in its name, Expeditions. Previous titles took place around cities for the most part, as you’d recover lost vehicles, build up bridges, and more. Expeditions take place entirely out in the wilderness. For 100+ hours you’ll find ancient relics, plane crashes, bridges (huzzah), and far more in a departure that both does and doesn’t work for me. It works in giving a sense of exploration that could be missing from previous titles. You go out into these huge spaces to try and find upgrade parts using a metal detector, or new climbs to earn in-game cash and it’s a lot of fun.
Where it occasionally doesn’t work is in how sparse the environments tend to be. You’re in the wilderness so it makes sense. Still, I miss the feeling of helping build up more of a living world at times. The version you get in Expeditions is saving up cash to build workshops, gas stations, and more to help you stay out and about longer. There are a lot of vehicles and upgrades to unlock, some are held behind story progression while others litter the landscape waiting to be found. You can do this during missions or in free roam and the Runner series continues to be one of the best podcast games out there. I had the game for roughly a week before this embargo and put about 45 hours in, barely getting a third of the way into the available missions.
These are spread across areas like Colorado, Arizona, and the Carpathian Mountains. There isn’t a ton of variety in the scenery early on as you do your tutorials, with Colorado and Arizona looking oddly similar. I loved my time in the lush forests of the Carpathians the most, as I used the various experts that each mission may require to explore the landscape and slowly build up my fleet of trucks and buildings.
Muddin’
The struggle of moving through rough terrain is 95% of the gameplay and it’s as good as ever. I started on PC where the game looks and plays fantastically before moving to Series X where it runs great but has one massive bug. Ground textures refuse to load, often, until you swing the camera around and it was a huge bummer. That was the only real issue I ran into though as I slowly moved from point to point in a much more structured and hand-holdy version of a Mudrunner game.
If you tried Snowrunner when it was on Game Pass and found it impenetrable know that Expeditions may be more up your alley. You are given waypoints in the world for everything, with the challenge coming in learning how to move through each type of terrain and the best truck and setup for it. You can quickly jump in and out of the easy-to-navigate menu system at any time with little penalty. They’ll let you know which type of truck is best for each mission, the difficulty, and exactly what items and experts you’ll need.
For those who love the series it may feel too easy, and early on it is certainly that. After 10 or so hours of enjoyable but slightly easy content, the difficulty ramped up and by the time I had reached a few hard difficulty missions I felt right back in my mudrunnin’ home of “how the ever-loving f*ck am I going to get up there” style thoughts. Your main gameplay mechanics are shifting gears, changing tire pressure, activating differential locks, and deciding when you need 4-wheel drive as you attempt to preserve gas.
Depending on your vehicle load-out you’ll have an inventory of useable items that can help you out of a sticky situation and sideboards to hold extra tires, repair parts, and more fuel. It’s a fantastic system carried over that requires a bit of forward-thinking but with more in-world options to help out so you’re never truly stuck. This is “baby’s first Mudrunner” in a lot of ways. It is the most approachable entry in a series that has always been anything but.
Lookin’ & Listenin’
One of the most common gameplay mechanics is exploring an area. To do this you can drive around it, use your drone to fly over, or pull out your binoculars to perv on it from afar. Outside of the ground texture loading bug on console, the game is routinely fantastic looking. It lacks the civilization of earlier titles, which hurts the variety a bit. Trucks, trees, rocks, rivers, and more are beautifully rendered with a lighting system that captures a full day/night cycle well.
The game felt like it ran at a near-locked sixty fps on Xbox with no other modes obvious to me. I have a pretty beefy PC and running at 4k ultra I was averaging roughly 100fps and it looked gorgeous. I stuck with Xbox for my playthrough, as there was no cross-save available. If you have access to both I’d recommend PC for now until they fix that ground texture bug. It normally wouldn’t bother me but it was an almost complete lack of any surface detail in a game where knowing what the ground looks like is of extreme importance.
Sound-wise the game has a bunch of generic guitar riffs that are a series staple. It’s inoffensive during the menu screens and the main sounds you’ll have in-gameplay are your engines mixed with a bit of wilderness ambiance. The biggest issue I had by far on both PC and Xbox was the text prompts from your experts telling you what was going on and where to go. They’re well written and crucial information was shown on screen for roughly two seconds before disappearing completely every single time and it was maddening. I didn’t see any settings to fix it and hope it is fixed quickly at or post-launch.
In Conclusion
Expeditions: A Mudrunner game looks great and is a more palatable entry in the series. It’s still full of that truck-puzzle maddening charm though, so both new entrants and fans of the series alike have a lot to enjoy in this 100+ hour-long title.
Expeditions: A Mudrunner Game
Played on
Xbox Series X*, PC
PROS
- Looks Great
- Plays Well
- Tons of Content
- Solid Variety
CONS
- Graphical Bug on Xbox
- UI bug for Expert Text Boxes
- A Bit Too Easy Early On
I tried getting into the other games in the series with not much luck. Glad they are taking a more game style approach with this one.
Been keeping an eye on this one for a bit, glad it turned out well Ill go ahead an pre order
This looks gr8, i haven’t played this type b4.