Spintyres: Mud Runner – American Wilds – PS4 | Review

By John Hay
| 26th October 2018
| PS4, Review
| 0

Getting our cars stuck in the mud is something most car drivers would like to avoid, but there is no getting away from it as you return to Mud Runners with the first expansion American wilds.

To those not familiar with the game, it’s an off-road driving simulation that goes to great lengths to feel authentic, it sees you driving mainly large HGV style vehicles into terrain that is clearly not suited to delivering logs and other various items to destinations in large sprawling maps, the challenge of the game is how you get them there.

You will come across issues, like your vehicle getting stuck in the mud (a lot) and you have to use other vehicles to rescue them to move on and complete your objective, or you could damage your vehicle and it just stops working and again you have to come to rescue it.

Most of the challenge of the game comes from how you go about getting from point A to B. You are provided with some basic 4×4 jeep type vehicles, that I later discovered were very handy to set off with first to plot your course so as not to run into problems later.

Gameplay is very slow, it’s very much one of those Marmite games that you either like the style and will love or it’s just not your cup of tea, I suspect it will appeal to people who like a farming simulator and that sort of thing.

The expansion, American Wilds, takes you from the original setting in Russia and plops you in the good old US of A, it adds a bunch of vehicles from American manufacturers and 2 new maps to explore along with a few more challenge maps to get your teeth into.

The new maps are nice offering different terrains than the base game to mess up and get stuck on (although that could have just been me as I really sucked at this game), the graphics on this title are also very impressive with great land deformation effects as you tear through the mud while trying to get to the logging stations to pick up wood then deposit your load somewhere else. This is a family-friendly site don’t know how much should talk about depositing loads…

Overall the DLC offers more of the same as the base game, and I’m sure fans of the base games are going to lap it up, but it’s not something that’s going to convert new players onto the title, like I said before you are either a fan of this slow relaxing (although often times frustrating) gameplay or you’re not.

Final Impressions

Personally I’m not a fan of games like this but I can appreciate the lengths the developers have gone to trying to deliver an experience that feels challenging and rewarding at the same time, I did feel when I was playing that vehicles would react in real life how they did in game so I definitely recommend playing it if you enjoyed the base title.

*Code kindly provided by the publisher for review*

Developer: Saber Interactive / Publisher: Focus Home Interactive
Release date: 24/10/2018
Platforms: PS4, Xbox One, PC
Platform Reviewed on: PS4 Pro