izigame.me

This game is basically a verschlimmbesserte* copy of SnowRunner with less content and features and more bugs. It is not worth the money.

TL:DR This is SnowRunner without cargo transportation, with fewer vehicles, with no or semi open-world only.
*Verschlimmbessert is a German term that literally means “the improvement made it worse”.
The Content.
This game contains some content from SnowRunner but even less then the SR base-game without the DLC. It only has some scout vehicles and very few trucks. Since the game is solely focused on exploration rather than transportation it lacks almost all big truck. But it also lacks many expedition style vehicles. For example, the AZOV Antarctic (the real life Kamaz 6345 Arctic Exploration Vehicle), the Voron AE-4380 and Voron Grad (the real life Ural 4320 and Ural NEXT), or the famous TUZ Tatarin (the real life GAZ 5903). All of them are splendid expedition vehicles, but somehow none of them are in the game anymore.
Also, this game has fewer maps, but more on that later.
The Missions/Expeditions
As said this game is no longer truly open world. In SnowRunner you had multiple regions with connected maps where you could drive around and select and complete the different tasks and missions.
Expeditions is different. While you can still drive around the map and also drive from one map to another via a connection point, you no longer select your tasks on the map. Expeditions has an approach like MudRunner. You have a “headquarters”-menu where you select the main missions. This means you select one expedition, select some trucks and equipment, and load the map. Then you complete that expedition and go back to the HQ to start over again. You can no longer complete multiple main tasks consecutively without reloading the map.
Also, you can only select your vehicles and upgrades in the headquarters. Not on the map itself. Meaning you have to either complete or abort an expedition to modify your vehicles.
The secondary tasks are still there and can be completed on the map, but they feel boring and very repetitive. In general, it feels like almost all tasks are just drive from A to B, and sometimes back from B to A. Delivery tasks are virtual only. If you must pick up or deliver some cargo, you no longer must actually pick up some cargo – they are virtual inventory items only. Sometimes you must tow a truck somewhere, but that’s the closest it gets to SnowRunner.
The Maps
As said, there are fewer maps than in SnowRunner. Expeditions only has two regions with four maps each and a tutorial region with only one map. There are no more garages or watchtowers on the map. Points of interest, like climbs and fords, are now highlighted on the map. You can also still build some bridges here and there but, as far as I know, you no longer have to clear roads or build factories. This means you also no longer have to unlock garages to have recovery points, since there are no garages in the game.
Now you have campsites, which you can customize to a certain extend. You can build resupply or repair stations and storage units. These also contain items for your inventory.
Equipment and Tools
Expeditions does have some new features. Now you have some equipment to use, like a drone and binoculars for scouting, a metal detector, a sonar, and a tire inflation system.
The sonar can show you how deep water is. This is nice but I rarely use it because it is pretty obvious which waterways are too deep and which are shallow enough to traverse.
The drone and binoculars can help you to find a way to approach your route. You can also find highlighted pathways (fords and climbs) with this. But again, it feels a bit unnecessary since it is again obvious which ways you can drive and which not. The drone is okay to get an overview over the area, but the controls are plain obnoxious and therefore I try to avoid the drone at all.
The metal detector is a nerfed version of the radar from SnowRunner. It is available as a roof addon and shows you the direction of upgrades, vehicles, and items. The Radar still exist as an addon, but it is unlocked later.
The tire inflation system lets you change the tire pressure to adjust the footprint (obviously). Yet, I do not consider this a new feature since Spintires – MudRunners true origin – had this feature for years already. To this day I am still surprised that this feature was not already available in SnowRunner since it is such a basic thing for offroad driving.
Some really good additions on the other hand are the car jack and the anker points for the winch. The car jack lets you flip the vehicle back on its wheels in case you toppled it. The anker point is exactly that: an anker point that can be placed almost anywhere as a cable attachment point for the winch. These two make it much easier.
The inventory style system for supplies is a good addition too. You no longer have supply addons that give you a predetermined amount of fuel, repair tools, or spare wheels, but you rather have racks than can be equipped with either of these supplies according to your needs. The same goes for your sideboard addons. If you have a truck with a cargo area you can fill it with said supplies – fuel, tools, wheels. I only wish they would give more supplies. Depending on the size of the sideboard you have four to eight slots. Each slot can be filled with either 50 L of fuel, 100 points of tools, or 1 wheel. This feels a bit limited if you do the math. A standard NATO fuel canister has 20 L, a fuel barrel has roughly 200 L. But it is okay for the game.
Bugs and lack of features
As said, this game is more or less just a copy and paste of SnowRunner.
What really bothers me is the severe lack of content and features and the number of errors, mistakes, and bugs.
Coop-Mode is not yet available, even though it was available in SnowRunner. How is it possible that a game does not have a basic feature that was present in its predecessor?
The game has less maps and vehicles than SnowRunner had at release.
At release it was not possible to rebind the key binding for the tire inflation system but there was a key binding option for the vehicle options (V in SnowRunner) even though these vehicle options no longer exist in Expeditions. This shows that the key binding menu was simply copied from SnowRunner without adjusting it to Expeditions. This was fixed in the first patch, but it feels unacceptable that something like this happens for a game like this.
There are also numerous gameplay and UI bugs. Hints either not showing or not disappearing, missions not progressing, addons disappearing or not functioning correctly.
Conclusion
In my opinion this game is not worth the money. This would have been a marvellous addon for SnowRunner. It would have been perfect – adding the new features like tire inflation, anker points, car jacks, vehicle inventory, and basic base building to SnowRunner. All this would have made SnowRunner heaps better. Also, it would have given you way more bang for the buck if you had all the new features in all of SnowRunner. Vice versa you could utelize all of SnowRunners existing vehicles AND MODS to explore the new regions and maps of Expeditions. Especially since Expeditions finally adds a desert setting to the franchise – something that I wanted for SnowRunner for a long time.
But no. This is a 40 € standalone copy of SnowRunner. This lacks all the good stuff and content from SnowRunner and at the same time deprives SnowRunner from the new features.
If this was an addon for SnowRunner the price would feel totally justified.
Additionally, I cannot explain why I feel so, but this game feels less intuitive than SnowRunner.
I do enjoy the new setting and the new features but I already know that this game will not nearly keep me occupied as long as MudRunner and SnowRunner did.