Knead the dirt! SnowRunner Game Review

Driving through the impenetrable swamps of Michigan, the snowdrifts of Alaska or the spring Taimyr mud, you relax so much that you don’t even notice how the game session is slowly turning into an eight-hour work shift. And I don’t want to stop there.

SnowRunner is a driving simulator that is responsible for restoring the infrastructure of three large regions and helping the people living there. A huge fleet of American and Russian cars, many contracts and assignments, beautiful graphics, but problems could not be avoided.

Last Hero

Devastating cataclysms swept the world: floods, earthquakes, abnormal cold and snowfalls. The player arrives in the state of Michigan, in the town of Black River, to help the locals return to normal life.

Such a short thread. No drama, horror or monsters – everyone is alive, humanity is slowly recovering, but needs help. When fulfilling contracts, we see the most common requests from the population: bring food, clear roads, fix pipelines, or deliver concrete slabs to strengthen the foundation of a house.

It doesn’t fit well with the dead world in single player. There is not enough at least once every two hours a dummy passing by or a local stuck in the mud. This would greatly spice up the SnowRunner, making ordinary trips more varied and exciting.

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There are also tests of the player’s driving skills. Driving along the route and knocking down six barrels, driving up a dangerous slope to the top of a mountain or pulling a car out of a cliff with a winch are typical local entertainments. You can find them, as well as other points of interest, using towers. A rudiment of the gaming industry that does not affect the experience in any way. It’s optional. You can safely open the map yourself, driving along local roads and slopes.

In each of the three regions there are transitions between four locations. Sixteen different cards, changing among themselves, do not let the player get bored. Somewhere the road suffered the least, but there were landslides and rockfalls blocking the passage. One of them was flooded, and the territories adjacent to the city turned into swamps. The highway was covered with ice and it is very dangerous to travel along it – it is better to drive over rough terrain. Want to travel comfortably? Kindly deal with all this.

Long road, unfamiliar

Contracts, challenges, and assignments serve as a starting point. They give for the performance of the experience and money needed to buy cars and parts for them. The essence, heart and soul of SnowRunner is the gameplay, overcoming extreme sections of the road in your car.

The rugged terrain simulation that took the community by storm with Saber Interactive’s previous project, MudRunner, is only getting better here. In addition to mud baths, the player’s car can easily fall into the snow or get stuck on the rocks.

I am glad that the developers have thought about inexperienced players. At the time of release, SnowRunner did not have a clear tutorial, but now it has been added. Driving is simple, and only the most dangerous situations require full concentration. Gear shifting is automatic, however, in order to increase cross-country ability, you will need to turn on all-wheel drive and differential, as well as switch to lower or higher gears. It sounds scary, but it’s actually very simple.

The presence of all these functions depends both on the starting characteristics of the car, and on the tuning that can be done in garages. They are the starting point for any of the locations, and very rarely you can not see it on the map. There is also the opportunity to replenish your personal fleet. Depending on the region, the catalog of available cars will also change.

All of them are divided into several types and types. There are Russian and American cars, among which there are: all-terrain vehicles, road tractors, SUVs and light scouts. Depending on the territory, you can buy an “American” or “Russian”, and then transport it to the desired region.

The main problem is that almost all American cars are useless. Having sold trailers and all starting cars, you can buy yourself a Russian all-terrain vehicle. He does any Western car in any situation – cars from Russia are simply more powerful. Saber Interactive’s warm attitude towards our auto industry pleases, but why then add Western licensed brands?

Assistance in overcoming dangerous off-road will be auxiliary tools, such as a winch. You can also tie it to a tree to pull out a tractor stuck in the mud, and sometimes return an overturned car to wheels – this happens here all the time. With the help of a loading boom, supplies that have fallen out of the trailer can be returned to their place, and cargo cranes help rescue their own vehicles from especially difficult situations.

Damage to your all-terrain vehicle in such conditions is easy, but SnowRunner often spares the player’s nerves. Having flown at high speed into the bump stop, the motor will only be slightly damaged. The maximum will stall, and it will be necessary to start the iron horse again. But, of course, you need to keep track of your car – fill it up at a gas station and sometimes stop by the garage for repairs. You can do all this in the field, but then you will need service trailers or fuel tanks.

On the banks of the nameless river

The atmosphere plays a special role in all this. Snow-covered forests, swamps and green meadows are so realistic that you want to touch them. Local country music or Taimyr’s guitar picks, although not bad, create a completely wrong mood. You turn on the group “Kino”, “DDT” or any other domestic rock music performer, and the effect is several times stronger.

The terrain design and graphical performance of SnowRunner only increase immersion – sometimes you just want to stop and watch how a stormy river carries away fallen trees, and the sun sets over the forest, creating sunbeams on the car glass.

Traveling with a bunch of resources in a trailer, there is a chance to be distracted by local beauty and roll over on a bump. In this situation, you don’t want to do anything else. You lie quietly on the side of the road and do not think that only 200 meters were left to your destination. The local nature quickly calms you down and with renewed vigor you start all over again.

Diagnosis

SnowRunner repeats the history of Death Stranding. It cannot be recommended to everyone. The gameplay will appeal only to those who want to spend hours fulfilling monotonous orders, enjoying not the reward, but their own achievements and overcoming difficult sections of the road, enjoying nature.

Saber Interactive can be scolded for some decisions, like car balance, a strange economy, and a dead game world. But when you overcome the ascent to the mountain along a narrow serpentine strewn with stones, and you watch the dawn, “What is Autumn” plays in your headphones, you want to forgive this game everything. I am glad that SnowRunner is still developing and improving, and the developers are not going to stop supporting it.

Pro

• Driving a car
• Graphic arts
• Location design
• Atmosphere
• Diverse gameplay

Contra

• Dead open world
• Fleet balance
• Weird Economy