Playing with trucks in the mud was my go-to pastime as a
little kid so it is no surprise that I’d fall in love with a game like
Spintires: MudRunner as an adult. Not only does Spintires: MudRunner appeal to
the same part of me that loves playing in the mud, but it tickles the same
parts of my brain that make games like Farming Simulator and Elite: Dangerous
so fun and satisfying. I don’t mind a grind in a game as long as the end result
is worth it whether that means harvesting acres of crops, sitting in a
hyperspace jump for hours, or slowly crawling back around through the mud in a
Russian logging truck. There is just something immensely rewarding about games
like this that I can’t get enough of and Spintures: MudRunner is right up there
among the best of them. Continue reading my full Spintires: MudRunner Xbox One
review for all of the details.
Game Details
- Publisher: Focus Home Interactive
- Developer: Saber Interactive
- ESRB Rating: "E" for Everyone
- Genre: Driving Simulation
- Pros: Extremely satisfying gameplay; very fun and challenging
- Cons: It’s a massive time sink
- MSRP: $40
In Spintires: MudRunner you are a driver that has to drive
big bukly Soviet-era trucks around the muddiest, boggiest, murkiest corners of
Russia to deliver fuel and logs to the outposts scattered around each region.
There are six large open world sandbox maps, nine challenges that task you with
doing specific things, and 15+ vehicles to choose from. You can also play in up
to 4-player co-op on Xbox Live / PSN.
Spintires: MudRunner is a simulation-style driving game
where you slowly drive big all-wheel-drive vehicles through the mud. It isn’t
100% realistic, though, because as we’ve seen with a lot of other “Simulator”games, these type of games have to meet a fine balance or else they can get too
slow and too boring and aren’t fun. Instead, Spintires: MudRunner hits that
sweet spot where its enough of a sim where you have to do things like manually
switch to all-wheel drive and lock the differential (so the wheels all turn at
the same speed rather than all the power going to the one wheel of least
resistance), and the physics are realistic enough you’ll bounce off of rocks
and the tires will slip on different types of terrain, but it isn’t so much of
a realistic sim that you’ll bury your truck in 4-feet of mud and have to wait
until Summer for the mud to dry so you can jackhammer it out. Which is what
happens in the real world. It hits a nice balance so it’s actually fun.
When you start a sandbox map you’ll have an objective like
delivering X amount of wood to a lumber mill. That means you have to first
equip your truck with the proper equipment, then drive to the forest to pick up
the logs, then drive back to the lumber mill to deliver them. As mentioned, the
only problem is that there is a mile of muddy road between each point. The maps
are totally open world, though, and are full of alternate paths – including
driving offroad and making your own path – and oftentimes the fastest route is actually not the most straightforward.
Another thing that makes the game fun is that it isn’t
simply about driving one truck from point A to point B. You’ll have access to
multiple trucks on each map (instantly switching between them is easy via the menu) and making efficient use of all of them is
important. You can haul “garage points” to far off outposts to build yourself a
new garage closer to the lumber mill to make it easier to equip your trucks
with the proper setups. You might need to use one truck as a fuel carrier to
refuel your other vehicles or a repair truck to fix them when they take too much
damage. You can also drive smaller Jeep / Land Rover-type vehicles to scout out
roads and paths or reach watch towers that reveal more of the map. Sometimes
you’ll actually get stuck somewhere, too, and will need to use your winch (with
wonderfully easy controls) or even use one truck to pull another truck out of
the muck. Each sandbox you play in has lots and lots of moving parts, which is
a ton of fun.
It has to be noted that the controls are not entirely
intuitive, however. The menus are sort of clunky and obtuse – especially those
for equipping stuff, loading and unloading, etc. – but you figure it out pretty quickly. The
steering is also a little fidgety at first because the wheel doesn’t auto
center like it does in most driving games, so you constantly have to be mindful
of what direction your wheels are pointed or else you might veer suddenly and
violently off to the side when you regain traction. Moving the camera around to
keep an eye on your front wheels is more important than being able to see far
in front of you, which isn't intuitive at first. At first the camera seems sort of unwieldy and not optimal –
you don’t really ever get a “good” view, honestly – but you can move it around
freely and zoom in and out and eventually figure out the best ways to use it in
order to work efficiently.
All in all, though, when you figure out how to do everything Spintires: MudRunner is an absolute blast to play. It is just so incredibly satisfying because you work for every foot of ground you cover and every item you successfully deliver. The crazy thing is that you aren’t even earning in-game money or working along a story path, you’re just doing work for the sake of using big cool machines in the mud and doing work. Some folks might find that boring, but I love it. I loved it when I was 4, and I still love it at 34. One word of warning, though – This game can be a massive time sink. It can take a couple hours (or more) to finish a sandbox map and, despite your actual movement speed being very slow, real time seriously flies by. You can lose yourself for hours upon hours here.
The presentation in Spintires: MudRunner is a bit up and
down. The environments are largely depressing gray and brown rocks and mud
that, while decently realistic, isn’t much to look at. I also have to say that the
mud itself – easily the most important thing in the game – doesn’t look that
great. It’s just sort of big globby chunky stuff instead of squishy slimy muddy
mud. The sound also isn’t particularly noteworthy. The trucks all sound the same and there isn’t
much music to speak of so the audio is largely just the groaning of your engine
and maybe some bird sounds.
In the end,
your enjoyment of Spintires: MudRunner comes down to how much you enjoy playing
in the mud, and how long you can tolerate games that most folks would consider
a boring grind. I happen to love it and think that anyone else that enjoys
immensely satisfying and rewarding sim-style games will love it too. Spintires:
MudRunner is well worth a look. Buy it.
Disclosure: A review code was provided by the publisher.
