Drive smart and this world can be tamed. Drive dumb and you’re a lawn ornament.
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Truckin’ in the Bushes
SnowRunner sets you and your trucks loose in an array of distinct environments, from muddy Michigan to snap-frozen Alaska and, finally, Taymyr in Russia. They’re larger than the maps in MudRunner, so there’s much more ground to cover. There’s also a vast assortment of new cargo types, which are weaved into the context of more varied objectives. A fallen bridge may need steel and timber to be rebuilt, while a local facility may be after food or fuel. Outside of delivery work there are stranded trailers to return, drowned and broken trucks to rescue, and other odd jobs to complete. Considering how long it can take to negotiate a single, slippery hill with a full load, there are dozens and dozens of hours of trucking time here. Hundreds, probably.I do, however, find it pretty annoying the objective system isn’t intuitive enough to automatically prompt a change in mission if you veer off from a planned route to, say, tug a missing trailer from a swamp and return it to its owner. You either have to go to your task lists – of which there are multiple – find the mission manually, and activate it from there, or activate the mission itself from the destination before it lets you drop it off.Unsurprisingly, completing objectives earns cash for brand-new, better trucks more suited to taming the harsh maps. There are, however, decent trucks hidden on the maps already, and I focused on finding them to add to my garage rather than buying new ones as the payouts are a little stingy and standard missions can’t be replayed for more credits (though there are certain timed delivery challenges that can be repeated).
Cash can also be injected into upgrades for your trucks, but it seems a bit daft that certain, utilitarian upgrades are locked until you hit the required level. It’s a fine enough way to reward progress through an arcade racer, for instance, but it makes little sense in a straight-laced, all-terrain delivery simulator to arbitrarily prevent you from buying off-road tyres you could otherwise afford.
Truck The Pain Away
The biggest disappointment is that the handling of the small, lighter scout vehicles – like SUVs and utes – isn’t great. They’re fine enough in the mud and muck but on level surfaces the rear feels strangely disconnected from the ground at times, almost as if the back wheels are strafing left and right. They sound surprisingly toothless, too; mash the throttle and they just drone up through the rev range before changing gears endlessly.The truck handling physics are satisfyingly hulking and heavy.
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SnowRunner can be played from start to finish in four-player co-op and some missions in particular feel like they were very much designed for co-op rather than solo play. Rolling, wrecking, or running out of fuel in the maps with no player garages to respawn to is a particularly lonely experience; having a convoy of fellow truckers on standby will go a long way to make SnowRunner’s most isolated objectives less intimidating.
Verdict
An earnest, unapologetically tricky, and time-consuming trucking experience, SnowRunner’s peculiar brand of off-road ordeals is oddly addictive, deep, and rewarding when played in the right spirit. It’s not often we see an authentic, slow-paced delivery sim that doesn’t baffle you with nonsense or try to upsell you a $2,000 jacket, but SnowRunner’s no slouch.