izigame.me

Oh no, what did you do?

With SpinTires being one of my favorite franchises, I planned on leaving a review after getting my hands on the game. I literally built my first PC to finally be able to play ST by the time it was already 6 years old, and I still regularly play all 3 titles leading up to Expeditions. So of course I expected to be wow'd by the next title.
What I did NOT expect to be is writing a f*$#ing college thesis of a review. But. I like being honest and thorough, so, I'm gonna be. I really dont know how to place this on my satisfaction scale, but I feel its probably a 6/10 for me.
TL;DR, This isnt like any evolution of Spintires, Mudrunner, or Snowrunner, and I dont think its a good thing. It could be, if they do right.
Pros:
Given that it's release is in line with Series S/X and PS5, its no surprise that visually this game is excellent. The terrain, lighting, shading, textures, it all looks great, and while I only have a couple hours in at this point, I'm still pretty impressed with the visuals. As someone who regularly off-roads IRL, I think Saber did a great job with making the terrain look realistic. Capturing the visuals of how aggressive a trail is on camera is surprisingly difficult; sitting behind the wheel or standing in front of a truck to spot it, obstacles look (and realistically are) much larger, climbs and descents much steeper, roll angles much more aggressive than they ever do on camera, even with a good lens. To translate that into an interactive video game cant be any less of a challenge, and I applaud that they only seem to get better and better at it with each release. It also doesnt seem as "grainy" as previous titles do, I always felt like there was some film of static noise over the visuals in previous titles.
Mods are still there. Not much to say about that, other than the welcoming of modders is always awesome in my eyes, and the community has produced some awesome mods for the previous 3 titles. I can't wait to see what people release in the coming weeks.
As far as features, theres a slew of new gadgets to play with, like the drone, the depth finder, and the tire pressure system. Being able to map out the path ahead is pretty awesome since the maps in these games rarely do a good job of showing the true difficulty of the terrain ahead, so being able to fly up a little and decide if you're even able to complete this path in your current vehicle is awesome. The tire pressure system brings a little bit more realism to the game and reminds me of the Central Tire Inflation System found on extreme rigs like military trucks (MRAPs, LMTVs, etc) and Arctic expedition vehicles. The only down side is that it doesnt feel like there is much of a difference when on rocks, which is a huge thing when off roading. If you watch videos of rock crawlers in places like Moab and Rubicon, you'll notice the tires on these trucks are aired down quite a lot like in the game, and it helps the tire wrap around the obstacle its trying to climb, providing more traction. I'm not putting this feature under cons though, its cool that they included it even if it isn't accurately effective.
Cons:
What the hell is this??? I applaud the devs at Saber Interactive for trying to step outside the box, I really do. I welcome creativity and breaking away from the norm, but this kind of feels like regression, and something I'd expect the FIRST game of a series to be, not the 4th title. Again, I only have a few hours into this one, but I cant help but feel my thoughts are just going to solidify the deeper I dive. I would have been a bit more apprehensive, but I scrolled to the reviews before I started typing this up, and I see I'm not alone in this. The main reason I'm being so thorough in this review is in hopes that Saber may actually read these and view it as criticism rather than just whiny bashing. Anyway.
For starters, the objective of the game feels far too simplified. The grindy, time-consuming objectives of Spintires, Mudrunner, and Snowrunner were not for everyone and I respect that; I myself would usually do some objectives on a map and then spend a large majority of time grabbing a scout, building it up, and focusing on conquering trails with no objective, but it was nice to go back and forth between objectives and off-road fun. It was kind of like an overland simulator mixed with a severe-duty trucking simulator. I assume the attempt in Expeditions was to remove the hauling aspect and focus on off roading and exploring, which on paper sounds awesome. However they did something weird. One of the major advancements of Snowrunner was the garage, where you have a "home point" that you can recover vehicles to, as well as repair them, store them, buy/sell them, and modify them, all within the same absolutely MASSIVE map. If you wanted to, you could leave vehicles at the garage or scattered throughout the map, ready for various tasks elsewhere, and you could have a virtually infinite fleet active on the map (Im sure there was a limit but after 700 hours of play time, I never found it). That's gone, reverted back to the older style like Spintires and Snowrunner where you load in a max of like 5 vehicles and that's the amount of vehicles you play with on that map for that mission set. There's no modification of your trucks when you revert back to your "camp," its just a recovery point in the event that you get your truck in a hopeless situation. It's really disappointing, because I really enjoyed setting up my truck for the particular thing I was doing; using different tires for different types of terrain, setting up a truck with the mindset of exploring trails versus setting it up to recover a heavy trailer that is located in a tough spot, etc. Losing that takes away from the game pretty seriously and I hope they find a way to bring it back.
The next big issue I have is with the maps themselves. I'm still getting to try each one, so I'm keeping my mind open, but so far they feel very.... middle of nowhere? I get and appreciate that the entire point is to feel immersed in a completely remote area, but these maps just feel otherworldly. It's hard to describe, because at least the "Little Colorado" map in particular, feels small and enclosed yet endlessly vast. In Snowrunner, the maps felt (and in reality, were) huge, but also like there was life outside of the borders of the map, even though there was no road that implied it. The fact that you had teleport points (the tunnels) that took you to other maps that implied they were in the same area also inhanced that "life outside the borders" feel. In Mudrunner, the maps didnt lead to other maps, but they still felt overall pretty large and kept that "life outside" vibe as well. This feels like I got drop shipped to a completely uninhabited planet. Again I get the remote theme, but damn do I feel alone in these maps lol. At least in previous games you would hear nature around you as if you arent the only lifeform on the planet. On top of that, it doesnt really feel like there are any real established trails, as if youre in a land that's just "dirt and mud and rocks, probably some water somewhere, now go over to this objective point, no I don't know a path for you to take just go over there however, don't roll your truck because I'm not bringing mine over there to recover you."
Summary:
I told you I was gonna be thorough. I warned you, so if you actually made it this far... damn.
Overall, I'm happy to see the Spintires legacy continue, and with the addition of mods, hopefully the community can save it even if Saber Interactive doesn't. Am I happy with it? Eh, at $40 not really, it would have been something I wait for a sale on, but I'm glad I didn't spend the $70 I had planned to do for the early download. Its more fun to ignore the game and go wheel. Could be better and Im at a character count now so I guess my review is ov