Spintires: Mud Runner

Mud runners is awesome, i would like to say before i go on that i have been playing a pre release copy that has had no patches or updates.

Now what is mud runners, it is a seriously hardcore dirt simulation, you drive off road vehicles of all kinds through a few different scenarios to achieve objectives such as deliver lumber to a mill.

Seems easy right?… well it would be but jump into challenge mode and it’s not so easy, the truck carrying the lumber is out of fuel, you have to switch to the fuel carrier to fill her up, well it needs repairs.

So now you’re switching to the utility vehicle down the road so that you can drive to the fuel truck, repair it, then take the fuel truck to the one carrying the lumber and fill it up, and finally drive the truck to the mill and deliver the lumber all while controlling the diff lock drive mode and in some scenarios the gears, then you have a challenge by which you need to not use the bridge and only use first person camera. Trust me, getting that huge hauler through a river took a few tries.

Ok not that you understand it really is a simulation game let me tell you, it looks good, really good, the scenery the trucks even the smoke billowing out of the exhaust as you plow your way through thick mud and up daunting mounds of loose rocks and sand.

Best of all is the mud, the way your truck moves through it and the way it reacts to your truck and moves and leaves track marks, its awesome the whole physics system in this game is awesome, the realism of the game is awesome i mean you can stall, i know it’s a small thing but if your truck of atv rolls on its side especially in water it will stall the engine and if you’re unlucky and in water, it will damage the engine until it is non functional.

But there are some flaws, the first being that the wing mirrors don’t work, and when it expects you to drive around in first person to complete a challenge that makes it damn difficult, especially if you are towing a trailer.

Second would be the tutorial, before i go into this one i’d like to say that the game does tell you to play through the challenges before doing the solo mode as these would teach you a bit more, but there are some things that the game should have explained from the start, like how to change gears, and what all wheel drive and diff lock actually do, as for people that are not so into cars and atvs would not know this and that could ruin their fun quite a bit.

Now for old fans of the original spintires they have labeled this as the ultimate edition of the original, what’s new you ask? So we have a challenge mode with 9 dedicated maps only available on challenge mode and they have added 13 new vehicles which bumps the total number of terrain wrecking beasts up to 19 and if that wasn’t enough to bring you over there is a new sandbox map that will join the previous 5 environments.

And the cherry on top of the cake is that you will be able to do all of this online with your friends by your side, so next time you get stuck in the river with a permanently stalled engine ( happened to me a few times) you can get your bud to tow you out.

SUMMARY

I think mud runners is awesome, bar a couple of niggly cons it’s a pretty fun game and i can see it bringing some seriously fun multiplayer sessions once it is fully released.

If you like farming simulator and games of that type you will love this.