Expeditions: A Mudrunner Game Review

Welcome to my review of Expeditions: A Mudrunner Game. This game is brought to us by developers Saber Interactive (World War Z, Teardown) and publishers Focus Entertainment (Highrise City, A Plague Tale: Innocence). This game was released on PC, PlayStation 4 and 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, and Nintendo Switch on 5th March 2024.

For this review, I was kindly sent a code for the PC (Steam) version of the game. As soon as I was offered a code I couldn’t resist accepting. I used to love one of the first games in this series called Spintires.

The Game

If you’re not familiar with this style of game, it all started back in 2014 when Spintires became a thing. This was one of the first games of its kind that I saw. You take a four-wheel drive vehicle out into the open world and try to deliver items from point A to point B. It’s a little different in Expeditions: A Mudrunner Game as you go out and find items and bring them back. It’s a very similar concept though.

However, the physics in Expeditions: A Mudrunner Game still blows me away as much as they first did in 2014 with Spintires. Honestly, you kind of have to see it to believe it but I love the way that mud and water churn up under your wheels, it looks so good. Of course, there are ways you can counter your vehicle just sinking into the muddy abyss. For example, you can switch up your vehicle from say rear-wheel drive to four-wheel drive.

There are also things such as changing your tyre pressure to help navigate through the more rocky terrain. That’s not it, you can also change your gearing so the acceleration of the vehicle is less aggressive which results in less mud being torn up and you get stuck. There is also the ability to switch up the differential of the vehicle which also stops you from getting stuck in the middle of nowhere with no way out.

Just Keep Driving!

Should you get stuck, it’s not the end of your journey because you can fast-travel back to camp. You can also use an onboard winch to hook onto a nearby tree or anchor point. This helps you to push/pull yourself out of the murky mess below.

There’s plenty to do in this game too as there are three open worlds, each with their own missions for you to complete. To assist in completing these missions there is a handful of useful tools such as a drone. This helps you scope out the area ahead and to ensure that you’re not leading yourself into an endless swamp. Trust me, you will want to use it else you may struggle to get out of there.

What I do like is that you earn money doing the in-game missions. This can be used to buy and customise vehicles as well as kit them out with more space for utilities or even cargo.

Conclusions

Overall, this game is a super chilled-out exploration game. The controls felt rather natural and I didn’t feel like I was fighting the controller for different button combinations. The graphics are amazing, and the sound effects and music are also of a pretty high standard.

The Spintires game I used to love back in 2014 is still shown in Expeditions: A Mudrunner Game. Of course, as that was some ten years ago, this massively improved over the years. If you wish to learn more about this game you can visit the official site.

I score Expeditions: A Mudrunner Game a well-deserved 9/10.