Have you ever tried to remove a piece of stuck apple or a fragment of potato crisp from between your teeth? You can feel it with your tongue, but every time you try to prise that nugget of food loose with your fingers you somehow fail to extract that annoying piece of flotsam. You dutifully go and try and floss the bastard out but it stays put, miserably still there when you run your tongue over it.
I think that sums up the gameplay of "Snowrunner" perfectly. The sequel to the successful "Mud Runner", this is more of the same stuck-in-the-mud gameplay, given some nice 60fps props in the PS5 version and a touch of graphical finesse.
The game is a minimalist exercise in dropping you right into the thick of things from the get-go, giving you just enough cash and resources to get yourself some kind of truck to patrol various locations around the world, performing MANLY duties such as rescuing other stuck trucks, toting goods around on trailers, and fixing landslides and busted bridges.
I'm probably not over-selling this, am I? Despite my somewhat sarcastic tone, I have to say that this game has its hooks in me something awful and thanks to the cheapo Sony PS Store deals I couldn't resist giving the series another go.
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| Stuck like a stepmom in a washing machine - again |
In Michigan (one of the first zones you get to play around with) you very quickly find out that just like in real life, the roads are absolutely shitty, and you're going to need something with some serious engine power and chunky tyres to navigate the muddy and flooded wastelands.
Through some lucky bartering and a couple of DLC trucks I managed to scrape enough cash together to pick up a couple of the better vehicles in the game (The Hummer H2 is actually better than you'd imagine at being a fairly decent scout vehicle, essential for finding the game's watchtowers (which help lift the fog of war that covers the map at first) and performing a few of the more simple tasks.
I remember a while ago there was a trend for 'slow TV' - programmes that did stuff like showed you some deer farmers sledging across the snowy arctic landscapes. I think "Snowrunner" qualifies as 'slow gaming' given that progress at times seems to be painfully slow, and you can sit there watching your vehicle crawl its way out of mud or a snowbank a millimetre at a time.
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| Nice Camel Tow missus |
Pulling huge trailers, towing other vehicles and trying to customise your trucks and cars so they will perform more admirably is all good stuff, and the graphics and sounds lend to the atmosphere the game generates. It's a fine looking game all right, mud acts convincingly squishy and snow is powdery and clingy.
But I still keep thinking back to that initial opening paragraph and what the gameplay feels like sometimes. If you're a teeth grinder, this game will see you right down to your roots in super-quick time - and that's about the only quick thing about it. Love it all the same though!
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