Today we are going to také a look at SnowRunner. SnowRunner promises next-gen off-road experience where you drive powerful vehicles and have to overcome extreme driving conditions to succeed as a truck driver. Whether it can deliver on its promise is the question we will try to answer today. SnowRunner is available on the Epic Store for 39 Euro and 99 cents or your regional equivalent.
With this review you have a choice of either reading it here in text form or listening to the video review. They both contain the same content.
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Video Review
Text Review
When Neil Armstrong first stood on the Moon and said "One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind." he bared the work on thousands of his back. Yet, at the same time, he was the one who was chosen as a pioneer for all the technological progress made just so we could one explore strange new worlds, to boldly go where no one has gone before. The thing is... we need to be a bit more humble. More like Joe the trucker. So, we do not journey to the Moon. We will go to trucking.
Very few people get to leave their footprint in the annals of history. But everyone gets a chance to leave a footprint of a truck in the Michigan wastelands, in the center of the Alaska wildlands, or the swamps of Russian Taymyr. These and other places are where you will get to drive your truck in the off-road trucking simulator SnowRunner - the successor to the great MudRunner.
Patience is the key. When you hear the sound of an old diesel engine, your foot immediately starts to tapping in the rhythm of valves. There is no chance any terrain will put you down to your knees. If you played MudRunner and you came to the conclusion that any problem can be solved by a rope and a reel you might get surprised.
The garage is no longer just a place to refuel. Instead, it is your strategic base of your new-age crusades. You get to give all kinds of engines, chassis, transmissions to your 18-wheeler knights. Your lowly squire off-roader can become a mountain goat capable of climbing anywhere. But the journey to get there is long and hard.
Some upgrades can be bought. Some can be found by explorations. In both cases, you need to explore every inch of the map pray that your car will survive the mud, snow, water, rocks, and your driving through them. And the start will bedevil you. The introduction is quite nice to you. Everything can be done with an obsolete Chevy and a creaking truck from GMC. But everything keeps constantly expanding and it quickly becomes obvious that the developers did not spend years just browsing through car and truck catalogs.
Deformation of the terrain. A combination of words that bring both love and hatred together. People who love realism will love the fact that their multi-ton colossus starts to fall through a layer of an unpaved road, when the snow stops their wheels from spinning because they forgot to change to winter tires, and when the rocks in the river give them a big fuck you. The snowy face of Alaska becomes the judge of perfection and any objections will be hammered down with an icy gavel.
But if you are a good driver, there is nothing that can stop you. You get to choose from an enormous amount of work offers. Transport wood, steel, or any other kind of construction material. And the addition of the need to repair roads, build bridges, or remove blockades is just a cherry on top of the already ginormous campaign.
Maybe you will not be doing the most glorious work. But you will be doing honest work. Helping stuck ca or finding a lost trailer can often check your skills more than just hauling some cargo. But the construction work is more... strategic. If done, they can shorten your journeys by creating shortcuts. But they can also quickly become your worst nightmare as the cargo can be located in a hard-to-reach section on the other side of the map. So, get ready to journey across the map many times.
While this might sound annoying to some, the game uses this to make sure you use everything it has to offer. This leads to routine and stereotype not being as big of a problem as you might expect. The idea of getting new and licensed gear and vehicles is what drives you forwards. And for the true fans of the genre, it is a fuel that will get them to do anything. Even those will are not fanatics will want to have a Hummer, Caterpillar, or Freighliner in their garage.
I will admit that this isn't exactly my kind of game. I felt like an Eskimo in the Caribbean. But it was not just about the fact that the game isn't precisely my cup of tea. Nor was it just the difficulty. It also was the camera that needs some serious work from the developers and patience from the player's side. When using 3rd person view its usable. It is somewhat fluid - well unless you are hitting the rocks on the side of the road and works for the most part. But the 1st person view? It reminded me of the one time I got to go inside a tank and I looked out through its tiny window. Add to this the horrible dashboard and a steering wheel which can easily give you motion sickness and you will quickly switch back to 3rd person view.
But hey, who knows, maybe these problems were added on purpose so the modding community has something to do. The community is great not only for co-op but also because it adds further content. The game is open to all the creative people and it is just a question of time before we see a steady flow of content added from the community.
Conclusion
So... in conclusion: Snowrunner is a great trucker game for those dedicated enough to realism. It has its problems such as the awful interiors of the trucks or the not so great music. But the benefits outweigh the problems by far. Licensed vehicles, great career mode, co-op gameplay, uncompromising difficulty, and most of all - the feeling when you drive are all compelling reasons for trucking fans to buy the game.
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