Snowrunner game review

Did you jump in mud and puddles in rubber boots as a child? An amazingly useless, but incredibly exciting activity. Approximately the same feeling did not leave me when playing SnowRunner, but instead of boots there were multi-ton trucks. How the developers managed to turn the transportation of goods on impassable terrain into fun fun, we will understand in this article.

I was born for this

According to Wikipedia, there is such a form of outdoor activities and even sports – “off road”. This is when people on off-road vehicles climb into the impenetrable wilderness and then try to get out of it. In the regions where I grew up, they have been studying it since childhood, but with one clarification: we did not climb into this wilderness, we were born in it.

In the Russian hinterland (and not only), you encounter severe off-road conditions right at the exit from the city, and if you are very impatient, you can also find it in the settlements. Any trip to a picnic or to visit grandmother easily turns into a rally or trophy-raid stage, and many learn to drive here on such broken roads that it’s scary to even walk on them.

SnowRunner perfectly conveys this spirit. In it, we are engaged in the transportation of goods in difficult terrain. We do not compete for the sake of entertainment and do not explore any uncharted lands, but simply perform quite everyday work in a terrain that is not very friendly to humans.

The game offers three global locations to choose from, each of which is divided into several cards. We start in Michigan, where a recent downpour has turned rural roads into impenetrable swamps. We can continue in Taimyr. The north of the Krasnoyarsk Territory differs from the Midwest of the United States except for the decoration of huts and dilapidated Soviet buildings. Here all the same mud, rivers and forests. Although purely subjective, they seemed to me a little more difficult to cross.

Oddly enough, the snow and ice listed in the title and actively mentioned in promotional materials can only be found in Alaska. Not to say that low temperatures have fundamentally changed the gameplay – there is no less dirt due to them, even swamps and stormy rivers remained in places. But fertile asphalt turned into a trap covered with ice, and huge snowdrifts forced to abandon the habit of driving around roads along the side of the road.

Muds are not afraid, though not tanks

The rear-wheel drive highway, which is presented at the beginning of the game, is unlikely to be able to drive away from the garage at least a hundred meters. The pickup truck may have better luck. But, as our tractor drivers say, all-wheel drive means only that you will have to drive longer for the machine.

This leads us to the most wonderful and at the same time not very pleasant part of SnowRunner – to its fleet. There are quite a few cars in the game; some of them are licensed, others can be recognized without branded nameplates. But the main thing is not their quantity, but diversity. Cars are very different from each other even within the same class. By managing at least a few of them, you can easily determine their strengths and weaknesses.

Scouts – ordinary jeeps – cannot carry cargo, but are great for reconnaissance and quests, in which you just need to get somewhere. Highway trucks are very powerful, they can easily be turned into road trains, but patency leaves much to be desired. For heavy trucks, this is not so bad, so it’s wise to use them to deliver supplies on the road. All-terrain vehicles can tear through almost any obstacles – they are indispensable if you need to pull out a stuck heavy cargo or perform a specific quest in a terrain inaccessible to others.

In theory, you should make sure that you have at least one representative of each category in your garage. In fact, there is absolutely no need for this. The first International Paystar 5070 all-terrain vehicle, which can be bought after just a couple of hours of the game, copes with all types of tasks. He is passable enough to replace scouts, and can carry no less cargo than any roadster.

Another problem with the fleet is low information content. From the description alone it is impossible to understand what kind of transport you need. The game has three scales: power to mass ratio, reliability and fuel consumption, plus information about the possibility of connecting an all-wheel drive and differential lock. Only information about the latter is useful, because the graphs are of no practical use at all.

Because of this, you have to try each car yourself and compare your feelings, not numbers. On the other hand, maybe this was the idea of ​​the developers. The game unobtrusively encourages experimentation and the development of new technology with one subtle detail – the lack of markdowns. You can buy a truck for a conditional $ 100 thousand, ride it for a couple of hours and sell for all the same $ 100 thousand.

Quests, tuning and mud baths

Quests in SnowRunner are divided into three groups: contracts, assignments and competitions. The first is a long chain of tasks connecting the entire region with a small plot premise. For example, an oil company may ask for help with the launch of a drilling rig, for which it will first be necessary to provide the plant with raw materials, and then deliver its products to the place of work, etc.

Competitions are trivial time trips that contradict the meditative nature of the game, so orders deserve more attention. They can be completely different tasks: deliver cargo somewhere, pull out a car from a swamp, or just enjoy the views from the top of the mountain. Most of them reward only with money and experience, but some affect the entire gameplay.

It is about building bridges and clearing the rubble. At first glance, they are not so necessary, because there are several paths to any point on the map, and each obstacle can be circled. However, when it becomes necessary to transport goods the size of a house, you will realize that it is almost impossible to squeeze them through a narrow gorge, and you can get stuck with them even in a small stream.

In addition, you can and even need to look for observation towers that open large sections of the map. With their help, you can find free cars scattered around the location and improvements for them. The latter are also given for raising the level and can turn even a relatively useless truck into a completely suitable all-terrain vehicle.

A more powerful engine in the context of the game does not primarily add speed, but increases efficiency when transporting heavy loads. Different types of tires increase patency on one type of coating, but lower on another. A high suspension means that digging into the mud on the roof will be a little more difficult. Just be careful – when it is installed, the stability of the machine will suffer.

Almost all improvements, except cosmetic ones, will be useful in the game. But in any case, they will not make driving easy. And although all tasks come down to moving from point A to point B, it is unlikely to get bored.

The types of surfaces on all cards are constantly alternating. I drove for five seconds on the asphalt – get a gravel road. Still too easy? Add a ton of dirt under the wheels. Earth turns into dirt for a reason, which means that water will soon emerge. And then there will be either swamps or a river – how lucky. Has this gotten into a mess? We’ll go uphill for the next bend. It’s impossible to get stuck in stones, but this does not mean that you cannot get stuck in them, and it’s easy to roll over on them.

Add to that the snow and ice of Alaska. Do not forget about the variety of cars, each of which behaves in its own way. Trailers also have a strong influence – it’s easy to deal with small ones, but I have not learned how to turn around with a semi-trailer. And you can’t forget about the load: you won’t even notice pairs of tool boxes, but it is better to avoid swamps with concrete slabs in the back.

With all this, even a small gap just will not work. First, most likely, you will have to turn on all-wheel drive. It’s better not to use it on the track, it’s very gluttonous. When it becomes difficult to breathe due to dirt, it would be wise to put down gear. And since you pulled with her to the last, it is better to immediately block the differential.

It will only be possible to rely on a miracle, or rather, a miracle winch. If you are not lucky to get bogged down where there is not a single hemp, you can always transfer to another car and try to pull yourself out in tow or ask a friend for help in case of a cooperative session. It is only necessary that the second truck is heavier and more powerful than the first.

Everything is more casual than it seems

In fact, instead of the latter, you can simply request the evacuation of the car. Of course, you will have to drop the load and the trailer, but this way you can easily return to the nearest garage, where the car will be repaired and refueled. As for finances, you shouldn’t worry at all: repair, fuel, cargo – everything is free. And for the sale of cars, as mentioned above, the markdown does not apply. The authors seem to say: “Don’t worry about the little things, we have already taken care of everything. Focus on the road and have fun. ”

The casualness of the game is not limited to economics. SnowRunner only has an automatic transmission, which undoubtedly simplifies the process of driving. Physics sometimes gives concessions, and the reliability of local cars will be envied by some tanks.

It was assumed that damage to the units will greatly affect the gameplay, but a giant margin of safety prevents this from being verified. Having dropped my jeep five times in a row from a cliff, I only half-damaged the engine and barely scratched everything else. He really began to spend a little more fuel, but in a normal game it’s unlikely to kill him. What can we say about coups, accidental collisions or boulders striking on the bottom. They scare only the first time.

Despite this, SnowRunner deservedly remains a simulator and does not turn into an arcade. It is only important to understand what exactly is his simulation. This is not some kind of extremely complex professional tool where you can conduct full-fledged training and where you only learn how to start the engine for the first few days. This is a simulator to overcome off-road, no more and no less. And in terms of displaying dirt, stones and water, as well as trucks floundering in them, he copes with his task perfectly.

I want to chide the game primarily for technical performance. At least on the PlayStation 4, SnowRunner crashes stably every couple of hours, since auto-save often works, and nothing critical happened. In addition, steering wheels are not available on consoles, which may cause some to delay the purchase.