Expeditions: A MudRunner Game Review (Xbox Series X|S, PlayStation 5, Switch & PC)

If, by chance, you’ve been able to absorb the wealth of off-road shenanigans that make up Amazon Prime’s The Grand Tour these past couple of years, then you’re in luck, as Expeditions: A MudRunner Game is a reflection of that, though perhaps without the added drag races across barren deserts in a Lamborghini Aventador. Granted, it is a lot slower, and it doesn’t quite break bread with a nexus of vehicles of a superior caliber, either. But it does, however, feature high-mileage treks across vast open landscapes and a treasure trove of mechanical tools that’ll make even the most diesel-hungry automotive enthusiasts a little giddy with joy.

For those who’ve been out of the loop for a good year or two, Expeditions: A MudRunner Game is a spin-off of Saber Interactive’s SnowRunner and—surprise surprise—MudRunner, two hallmark third-person driving simulation chapters based entirely around the transportation of cargo and other natural materials. This time around, however, there isn’t any lumber to shift from one port to the next; on the contrary, there’s scientific research on the docket, and a boatload of geologists with thrice as many requests for you to carve away at with a winch and socket wrench.

Let’s acknowledge the elephant in the room here: Expeditions looks a whole lot like SnowRunner, right? Well, it is. Or at least, it idles in receipt of all the same mechanical components and open-world theatrics, but not a sleek blanket of snow and frost, of all things. But what else does it have to offer? Is it a step in the right direction for the series, or is it a huge lunge backward? Let’s talk about it.

Expedition to Arizona

Expeditions: A MudRunner Game emulates the core gameplay mechanics of its previous mainline entries, to the point of having a slew of nifty tools to utilize out in the field, a selection of well-equipped junkers, and a series of contracts to romp through over several in-game days, weeks, and—if you can withstand the ever-shifting nature of the job—months. The game, as a whole, isn’t all the difficult to crack: there are three maps to explore—Little Colorado, Arizona, and the Carpathians—and a selection of scientific endeavors that fledgling professors have etched into your curriculum. In a true MudRunner-type fashion, you must choose an appropriate vehicle that suits the type of terrain, and plot a course for a particular marker on the map, either to establish the groundwork for a research project, or to bring a field technician to the epicenter of an underlying geographical issue.

There’s a downside to all of the above, though: it isn’t open-world. Or at least, not in the way you’d expect, anyway. There is, thankfully, an option to scoot around in one of the three available maps, but such luxuries only become available once you’ve mopped up the primary expeditions and essentially wiped the slate clean of all its objectives and POI. Until then, it’s merely the case of accepting contracts, and deploying your vehicle into the world for the sake of completing a set number of tasks, and then rewinding the clock to, well, do it all over again.

Missions aside, the game does offer a good selection of upgradeable components for you to peruse at your own leisure. These suites, while not quite as fleshed out as those featured in MudRunner and SnowRunner, are simple to navigate, too, meaning series newcomers don’t have to drown themselves in drawn-out tutorials.

Mud Stranding

For the sake of adding a reference point, Expeditions is somewhat similar to Death Stranding, in the sense that you do indeed have cargo to transport, and with it, a ludicrous amount of uneven terrain to cross en route toward an anchor point in another section of the world. In a similar vein as its predecessors, each romp through the sludge is comprised of using various tools to scale up and down rocky terrain, deflating a set of tires for the sake of boosting your grip, and seeking out new ways to cross deadly feats whilst keeping a firm track of the game’s ever-changing conditions and elemental effects.

While the game may not be a traditional open-world experience at heart, it does provide you with the freedom to forge your own paths out of the bones of its three regions. The setup, however, is all rather straightforward: find a vehicle that has the ability to get the job done, and set out to reach a destination. It’s your job, as the driver, to figure out how to whittle down the miles, whether it’s by chewing through the trees, powering down a relatively deep body of water, or clipping down a mountain with the aid of your trusty winch.

While the objectives aren’t exactly interesting, the journeys that you embark on between them can be quite entertaining, and, at times, exhilarating. It sounds strange, for sure, but some of the best fun I had behind the wheel was during the moments that involved conserving fuel, and powering through the last quarter mile, fully aware that, if I happened to make one wrong judgment, I’d be barreling down the side of a swamp and into a ravenous current.

Rolling in the River

What comes as a surprise is the game’s oddly digestible driving mechanics—a system that, while connected to a driving-oriented world, is easy to navigate and roll with — even during the tougher challenges. To cut a long story short, if you’ve dipped your hand into just about any game with vehicular mechanics in it, then you’ll probably be able to slip right into Expeditions without any major issues. It isn’t Flight Simulator, is what I’m saying; there aren’t any overcomplicated sticks, buttons, or controls to wrap your head around, but rather, a simple control suite that squashes the vast majority of its functions into a handful of buttons and triggers. Thanks to the game also offering a first-person and third-person option, you can’t really go adrift, either. And that’s a relief, truly.

With all of that said, Expeditions does conjure a host of environmental issues for you to clamber over, few of which require a steady hand and a pinch of imagination to overcome. In no way is it a sprint, but rather, a gradual slog through the motions—baby steps that can take anywhere from a few seconds to several minutes to complete. It isn’t a frustrating experience by any means, but it does begin to daunt on you, especially when you’re trying to unravel the entire map before it finally goes on to open up a new doorway for you to pursue. And that’s something that, honestly, I found tedious: having to vacuum the entire region. Such tasks obliterated my fuel consumption, which often led me to have to rewind the clock and make a second or third attempt. I didn’t want to remove the veil — but I had to.

Verdict

I’m not going to say that Expeditions: A MudRunner Game is on par with its peers, because it isn’t. Don’t get me wrong, it is a good driving simulator, albeit one that does unfortunately fall short in several areas, such as its map sizes and mission objectives. Having said that, the series’ defining feature—the physics-based gameplay that centers around your ability to sludge and slide through thick pastes and rocky hills, is still alive and kicking. Sure, the contracts can be a little formulaic and bare bones at times, but at no point did that ever stop me from wanting to add a splash of fuel to the tank and set out on another expedition — if only to see if I could discover a new way to reach a destination and get a little creative with each new approach.

All in all, there’s a good amount of content to jump into here, more so if you’re the type of gamer who strives to unearth every aspect of the world and its host of collectibles and gadgets. Its semi-open world feature isn’t quite as compelling as its predecessor’s, but that isn’t to say that the trio of biomes that it does have wedged in its arsenal aren’t any less fun to explore, either. For argument’s sake, though, I will say this: if you’re after a slightly less demanding iteration of SnowRunner, then there’s a good chance that you’ll get a kick out of Expeditions: A MudRunner Game. If, however, you’d soon rather dive into the deep end and have all of the bells and whistles handed to you right from the get-go, then you’ll probably be better off sticking with MudRunner or its snow-centric sibling.