Expeditions: A MudRunner Game Review – Free From the Mire

Off-roading sims like Expeditions: A MudRunner Game are as unyielding as the rivers they expect you to ford. There are no arcadey consolations or cheap workarounds in Saber Interactive‘s game. There’s just where your truck is and where you need your truck to be, separated by miles of cliffs, canyons, forests, and swamps. My familiarity with vehicles only runs as deep as F-Zero and Mario Kart, but I appreciate Expeditions in ways I never expected. Driving in this game feels like being in a kung fu training montage. You pummel a wooden block over and over again, waiting for the reward of your sensei’s approving nod.

Expeditions: A MudRunner Game Review

Expeditions: A MudRunner Game tasks you with hauling packages, towing mud-stuck vehicles, surveying geological sites, and otherwise using your off-roader to complete various missions. You need to carefully plan what equipment to bring and what route to take, but improvisation and mechanical skill become just as important when your truck suddenly loses traction on a wind-bitten cliff, and you start to slide over the edge. Expeditions is as uncompromising in its vision as the mud sucking at the treads of my Don 71 scout. Fight it, and the result will be frustration. Flow with it, and the result is freeing.

Story: Mud vs. Everyone

Expeditions has minimal story, just enough to explain why you should bother driving a multi-ton TUZ 16 Actaeon through the devil’s idea of swamps and up canyon cliffs. Whether you’re helping a freelance reporter take pictures for a story on dam construction or installing equipment for geological groups, it all comes down to the same thing. Get from Point A to Point B through some of the most daunting terrain you can imagine. The mission briefings are light on detail and personality, but at least they’re efficient.

There’s an open-world free-roam mode and a testing ground to try out new builds, but expeditions are the heart of the game. There are 79 in total, divided between Little Colorado, Arizona, and the Carpathians, the vast majority taking place in the latter two locations. Arizona’s espresso-colored rivers and plateaued cliffs offer a distinct challenge from the violet bogs and dense woodland mountains of the Carpathians, but your goals change little. The story evolves a bit as you complete multiple missions for the same employers, but don’t expect too much. The narrative plays second fiddle to the jobs.

The most important stories in Expeditions are emergent ones, the little tales of conflict and triumph over adversity that you spin in your head as you play. I’ve never hated a video game villain as much as I hate mud in this game. Not Sephiroth, not M. Bison, no one. Arizonan mud is my new rival, and in about half my expeditions, the only story that matters is whether my tires tear free of it or that filthy dirt custard claims another vehicle.

I do wish that Expeditions offered more of a story than meager mission briefings and the occasional side quest blurb. A dense plot isn’t mandatory, but since the devs included a story, it’s only right to critique it. The lack of detail and emotional substance in the mission briefings make them forgettable, leaving little impression of who I’m working for or why. Granted, the game’s mechanics feel so good that the story hardly matters once your wheels start spinning, but I’d rather see no story at all than one that’s underbaked to the point of risking salmonella.

Gameplay: Gaining Traction

The more I play Expeditions: A MudRunner Game, the more I think about Death Stranding. On the surface, a truck grinding its way through the Coloradon muck has little in common with Norman Reedus and the post-apocalyptic infant strapped to his chest. Dig deeper, and you’ll find intense similarities. Both are games about the journey, not the destination, destined to infuriate anyone who simply wants to go from A to B fast. That said, they’re both exceptionally good at what they do, which is deliver an authentic experience of movement.

Traction, weight distribution, and momentum matter. Every rock and crevice is an opportunity to flip your vehicle or get hopelessly stuck, forcing a costly reset. In Expeditions, you’re always so close and yet so far. Its emphasis on traction and positioning demands a Zen-like acquiescence to the Now. Now my passenger’s-side tires are perched on the lip of a ravine. Now I inch forward, careful not to slip, babying the wheel. As my tires find flat ground once more, I realize I’ve been holding my breath.

In another game, to cross a river and climb some rocks, you’d just step on the gas and be done with it. In Expeditions, you use an Echo Sounder to test for points shallow enough to ford. Then, you shift to all-wheel drive to gain traction on the slippery river rocks. As your sodden vehicle climbs free, you reduce tire pressure for a better grip. If your wheels are spinning in place, you deploy an anchor onto the bank and haul yourself out with a winch. Whether you’re slogging through Carpathian bog mud or traversing a narrow ridge, you’ll need the right equipment, a solid understanding of your vehicle’s limits, and patience.

Expeditions also shares Death Stranding‘s love of route-plotting. Before you even disengage the parking brake and put toes to pedal, you’ll want to plan your route. Using your map and binoculars is important, but most valuable of all is your drone. You can deploy it at any time for aerial scouting, and you’ll want to. Fallen trees, avalanche zones, pits, boulders, and a dozen other natural hazards threaten to stall your progress or destroy your vehicle. Popping a tire, flipping your truck, and demolishing your engine are constant possibilities.

Before launching each expedition, you can customize your vehicle. You can also hire specialists, like mechanics and hydrologists, to gain unique advantages and decide what additional equipment to buy. This pre-planning stage is one of my favorite parts of Expeditions. You want to bring extra gas, a spare tire, or anchors to hitch your winch to? It’ll take up valuable cargo space and eat into your profits. This system creates a balancing act reminiscent of older Armored Coregames. Bring too much equipment, and you’ll waste money, compromising future expeditions. Bring too little, and you risk failing the expedition altogether. I love the strategizing that results, although I wish there were more gear to choose from.

Some equipment, such as the drone, have their own minigames. While they’re a welcome break from the occasional frustrations of driving, they’re underwhelming. The controls are stiff, and these minigames can be endlessly repeated with zero consequence. Being able to brute force scans by pinging every spot in the river until you find what you’re looking for takes both the skill and the charm out of it. I appreciate the thought behind these minigames, and if they were more in-depth, I’d say they made a valuable addition. As it stands, I never dreaded them, but they’re more of an interruption than anything else.

Graphics & Audio: Chugs and Sputtering

The Portable Meteostation rattles around on the sideboard of your Step 310E SE as you fight to climb one last hill before your destination. With no trees to attach a winch to, you have no choice but to plant an anchor higher up the slope. It locks into the earth with a weighty clank, and with a sound like a climber’s carabiner sliding into place, your winch hooks on. Branches break, and mud deforms under your tires as you reel yourself in. As the nose of your truck crests the ridge, the first light of dawn skitters and bounces off your hood. Expeditions: A MudRunner Game crafts moments like these from little more than gravel and grit.

The detailing on vehicles is excellent, and every modification is visually represented. Seeing the Bullbar Bumpers, Nerf Bars, and Perforated Exhaust I chose makes every vehicle feel more personal. The paint customization is a bit lacking, but diverse options elsewhere make up for it. The visual and sound design elsewhere is solid. From starting your engine and disengaging the emergency break to crunching fender-first into a pine tree, everything sounds and feels right. As a result, Expeditions is a far more immersive experience than I expected.

The natural landscapes are gorgeous, and between Little Colorado, Arizona, and the Carpathians, there’s always something new to see. Thanks to the chunky truck noises, believable maps, and realistic handling of traction and acceleration, it only takes a few seconds of driving to feel immersed. While the visuals aren’t groundbreaking in either style or fidelity, they do the job. Throw on your parking brake on a hilltop and look around. The similarities to Death Stranding rear their head again as you gaze out at your destination. There’s a war to be had with the terrain ahead.

The only disappointment is the soundtrack. It’s meager in selection, mediocre in execution, and, by default, weirdly quiet compared to the rest of the game’s audio. In the end, I found the best solution was to turn it off. The vehicle noises are so well done that ditching the soundtrack doesn’t detract much from the experience. Still, when the best solution is to disable something entirely, there’s a problem. Playing other music is obviously an option, as is just enjoying the purr of the engine and other SFX, so none of this is a dealbreaker, but it was frustrating.

Conclusion: Unleaded Designs

I experienced no crashes and few bugs during my time with the game, although there were two instances of nasty frame stuttering. For every car game enthusiast who will dislike Expeditions for its sew-saw pacing and meticulous gameplay, there will be a gamer who doesn’t care about trucks at all but loves the way the game rewards planning and perseverance. It’s the video game equivalent of a bonsai tree, beautiful but labor-intensive. Though weaknesses like the undercooked story hold it back, Expeditions: A MudRunner Game is excellent. Just bring a spare tire and some extra fuel for the trip.

Expeditions: A MudRunner Game is available for PC (Reviewed), PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, and Nintendo Switch.

Review copy given by Publisher.