henke on 4/5/2020 at 13:20
Did someone say "SNOWRUNNER CRANE GAMEPLAY"? :D
Oh, no one did? Well... here it is anyway.
[video=youtube;w0jUKWlie-o]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w0jUKWlie-o[/video]
Renzatic on 4/5/2020 at 16:02
Does the mud ever dry up in those games? It just doesn't make sense to me that it's always muddy all the time.
Great job on the hoisting though.
henke on 5/5/2020 at 05:09
The mud is slightly less muddy when it's not raining, so that's something.
henke on 18/5/2021 at 00:10
It's also coming to XBox Game Pass (for PC)!
[video=youtube;7dmw7qY-N9M]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7dmw7qY-N9M[/video]
Yeah that's right, the 2020 GAME OF THE YEAR dropped in ya lap just like that. Enjoy!
henke on 7/3/2024 at 15:09
The latest game in The Mudrunner Saga came out a couple days ago.
[video=youtube;O7cdA9qs8ME]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O7cdA9qs8ME[/video]
I've played a few hours and here are my early impressions:
This is a more linear, mission-based afair compared to the open ended Snowrunner. It's a spin-off rather than a continuation. Some gameplay systems and controls have been refined. The ability to change tire pressure, use a drone/binoculars to scout ahead, and some of the new tools are welcome additions that I hope live on in the next proper Mudrunner game. But the game also introduces stuff that I hope are evolutionary dead ends, like simplistic QTE-ish minigames. The core gameplay is as good as ever. I'm playing on PS5 and the game looks and runs smoothly, aside from an odd low-res ground texture bug on the first 2 maps. Ground textures work fine on map 3 so really not sure what went wrong here. Anyway, they say they'll patch it any day now.
The scope and ambition of this whole thing feels like a step back from Snowrunner, but it's more hand-holdy nature and focus on exploration rather than logistics might also make it a better on-ramp for new players. I like that they've refined some stuff here, but I also feel like they could've gone further. I love Snowrunner but there's definitely room for improvement. Attaching winches is still kinda wonky. Cockpit-view hands on the wheel are as spastic as ever. Most of all I wish the gameworld felt more alive. It's still just you driving around. How about some AI trucks, or at least some NPCs milling about your campsites? Ah well.
Shadowcat on 9/3/2024 at 10:19
I think there was some mud from 34s-35s in the video, but the camera angle was so low that you couldn't see it.
I get that they had lots of stuff to show, but advertising a Mudrunner game without showing any mud is really weird.
henke on 11/3/2024 at 08:39
Yeah the Arizona/Grand Canyon environment is the most unique one here, compared to previous games, so there's a lot of focus on rock crawling. Rest assured, there's still mud in there and the mud physics are as good as ever. :)
henke on 27/5/2025 at 17:44
Saber Interactive's latest truckin' game RoadCraft has been out for a week now and I've played 39 hours of it, so I guess I should do a write up. First off, here's some gameplay clips.
[video=youtube;kbYyPT03TW8]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kbYyPT03TW8[/video]
I've been saying they should just stick to one title for these Runner games instead of naming each one differently, but it turns out this one is named differently for a reason. This is not a Runner game. A lot of core mechanics have been simplified from earlier games. No more fuel consumption or damage, simplified gearbox. The whole focus has been shifted away from offroading and towards building infrastructure and setting up transport routes instead. I noticed these changes when playing the demo a few months back, but a lot of fans didn't get the memo and it has led to quite a few bad user reviews.
Gameplay
Setting up routes for the AI trucks is fun in an automation-game kinda way. The worlds of the runner games have always felt empty, so seeing a bunch of trucks driving around feels like a reward in itself. The road building mechanics are great and can be used anywhere. You're free to pave paradise and put up a parking lot if you want to! A lot of things with the interface feels much smoother and intuitive than earlier games, like switching between trucks and aiming the winch. Cargo also functions in a more organic and logical way. The cockpit view is somehow much more pleasant and useful. The whole mission structure is more linear than in Snowrunner where you could drive around and pick up a million missions. Here you usually just have a handful of main and side missions available at any time, and progressing in the main missions unlocks more. The missions mostly stick to the game's bread and butter of fixing infrastructure and plotting routes, but occasionally something unexpected and cool comes up. Like in the "Sunken" map where large parts of the map are flooded, but once you've delivered and installed the water pumps the previously flooded areas are slowly drained to reveal new parts of the map.
Performance
Runs smoothly on PS5 in Performance mode, tho there are some occasional hitches. There also aren't any headlights or functional rearview mirrors yet! The game looks great, and the physics have been noticably improved from earlier entries. At higher speeds trucks and scout vehicles would bounce around a lot in earlier games, but here they feel much more solid and firmly planted on earth.
Overall
Uh... I love it? It's overtaken Skin Deep as my GOTY forerunner. I know Death Stranding 2 is coming out in a month, but unless ol' Kojima steps up the complexity of his road-network-building game it's gonna look like amateur hour next to RoadCraft!
