Expeditions: A MudRunner Game Review (Vic502)
TLDR: This is not SnowRunner 2. If you keep that in mind, like rock crawling and exploring, don't expect a lot of mud running and no heavy cargo hauling, it's a lot of fun.
If you like the driving, upgrade hunting and exploration, truck collection and customisation of SR, you'll probably like this. The world building is really good, intricate and natural feeling, without feeling chaotic/random, and as there are no real roads, your own paths need to be found, and they might not be clear or easy. This makes the driving part more technical than in SR (no roads at all) and not as "relaxing" as SR.
It also looks as good as SnowRunner, made in the same engine.
Yes, the roster of trucks is not as big (~20-25, depending on which DLC you own), but the game is still young. Also, there’s only one heavy truck, but the focus in this game is not on heavy trucks or heavy hauling. A big plus is that the customisation options like bumpers and roll cages are not just cosmetic, like they are for 99% of trucks in SR. They provide actual protection.
Some nice and novel features are included, like roof rack customisation (i.e. more fuel or more spares), tyre inflation system, winch push/pull, winch anchors, etc. The specialists (to buff certain aspects of your experience, like stronger winches, or better fuel economy) and base upgrades like cargo drones and recovery garages.
Missions can be a bit dull or samey sometimes, but they are just there to have an excuse/reason to enjoy the driving.
The major gripes I have with Expeditions are:
1. Quasi-persistent world. Yes, bases and bridges stay built and other mission buildings are persistent, but trucks (only up to 4 per mission) only live in the world for the duration of the mission. So, if you fail to complete the mission with the truck(s) you take, you’ll have to start the mission from scratch. No bringing in more and more recovery trucks like in SR.
2. Some QoL features are missing and there are a few bugs and mission text syntax errors.
3. Same engine as SR, so same physics quirks, like random damage when going fast (although you won’t be going fast a lot 😊.)
4. Also, same gearbox mechanics as in SR, so no manual options.
5. The same opaque descriptions of upgrades, tyres and add-ons as in SR. No clear numbers or stats for tyres or engines, etc.
6. The base game is a bit on the short side, with only two big areas (4 maps each), and 2 small areas (1/2 maps each).
7. Because there are more gadgets than in SR, the controls had to be adjusted and changed, but they didn't include a custom control scheme for controllers.
8. You cannot recover to a different map. So if you have one vehicle and get stuck on a map without a base, you're back to square one and have to start the whole expedition from scratch.
I was also a bit disappointed when this came out and wasn’t SR 2, but after it came to Game Pass, I somehow dropped a 100 hrs in this … and then bought the Y1 version on Steam. Recommended (from someone with 1300+ hrs in SR).