I never imagined I'd ever spend over 450 hours playing a single Playstation 5 game, but Roadcraft is like therapy, a 'slow game' that has ticked all the boxes I need right now, providing a fantastic set of challenges that - on a fourth playthrough (yes you read that right, FOURTH) continues to provide a heck of a lot of enjoyment for the modest buy-in price.
Roadcraft has just seen the launch of its first DLC, the "Rebuild Expansion" which I actually paid for ages ago, and have waited for quite some time to see actually show up. The fact that it launched on the same day as the digital-store-wrecking "Hollow Knight Silksong" was unfortunate, but eventually I got to download the thing and take the new stuff for a spin.
Though I'm midway through my completion of existing levels, I couldn't help sneaking a look at what's new, and using some of the new DLC vehicles to help with existing challenges.
First up is the new awesome "Ant" bridgelaying tank. I mean look at this thing:
In some maps you're faced with these annoying gaps, with no concrete plants or timber-harvesting capabilities to allow you to build a bridge, so with this vehicle you can just roll up, drop a portable bridge down, and cross those gaps with ease (even retrieving the bridge later on if you want to, once you can build proper bridges).
Some of the existing vehicles have also been beefed up, like the ever-reliable Mule, which has had some botox in the wheel department:
It comes with improved stats as well as those beefy tyres so can cope with some hefty loads. Hilariously though, it's still as likely to tip over at the most inopportune moment, just like its skinny-wheeled predecessor.
The Armiger Thunder (or "Land Rover" as we call it in my culture) has also had some wheel pumping, and now looks properly rugged (and can cope with mud like a mudskipper):
Lara Croft would probably go moist at the prospect of this thing, which comes with a load of useless roof decoration, but sure looks the part.
There are a couple of other vehicles including another bridgelayer (built on an existing truck chassis this time with a shorter bridge span) but it's not just vehicles that have been enhanced - there are two new sprawling maps chock full of new challenges, infrastructure stuff and goodies to keep you playing for another 450 hours or more.
Lasst but not least the new promised 'difficulty' modes are now in place, giving you extra menus to tweak if you're the sort of sadist who likes to make games harder. You can tweak everything from recovery costs to fuel consumption (Yep, you can set vehicles to run out of fuel at inopportune moments, though why you'd want to do that is beyond me, even for bragging rights).
Saber has also tweaked a few UX bits and pieces. Sadly not all the improvements are good, the new pathfinding for infrastructure route-building missions is horrible and seems to have some serious jaggies / lag to it, which makes building effective routes even trickier than before (and it wasn't exactly easy before the tweaks).
Overall though it's well worth the extra £12 just to get those two extra maps and all those vehicle enhancements (and the bridge tank is a lot of fun, admittedly, I mean who ISN'T going to lay a bridge from a road to the roof of a building just for shits and giggles).
Roadcraft is far and away my game of the year, and though Saber don't often hit the mark with some of the updates and changes, there's more on the way and it seems they're committed to making Roadcraft even cooler in future, so stay tuned and see what else they come up with.
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