When I was a kid we were pretty poor and I spent a lot of time playing with a really tiny selection of toys, amongst which my massive Tonka Toy digger and Dump Truck were what I'd spend most of my time with. The digger was great for levelling the sand and mud in our scratty back garden, while the dump truck was tough enough to bear my childhood frame down the nearest incline, and could take a lot of punishment. So of course I'm going to be all over any game that offers a whiff of recreating the thrill of taming a landscape using similar machines.
Saber Interactive's "Road Craft" is the latest game from the Spintyres mob, who have turned the art of wallowing in mud with colossal vehicles into an art form.
Previously with games like "Mud Runner" and "Snow Runner" we've merely spent time trying to get huge loads from A to B through inhospitable terrain, but now the gloves are off and we've had it up to here with that tiny patch of slick mud putting the brakes on our diesel-powered all-wheel-drive monsters, we're going to teach that mud puddle a lesson it'll never forget with a huge rusty road-leveller or a digger that can smash through any obstacle with ease.
In the first few hours, you'll meet your red-headed gorgeous radio operative who drip-feeds you a disaster scenario where an oncoming storm threatens to flood a local factory and warehouse complex. It's up to you to wheel into action, first scouting out the area with a light 4X4 before getting to grips with the heavier machinery required to complete the job of building a flood defence wall.
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| It was like that when I got here! |
The tutorial missions are fairly simple, but very quickly you begin to realise that the key to success in this game revolves around getting your head (and your muscle memory) around a fairly complex set of controls for certain vehicles, or directing autonomous vehicles to set up delivery routes for materials to help you get that wall built (if only Donnie had some of those, eh?)
Like all Spintyres games, the landscape is gorgeous in its devastation and chaos, but there's a lot of stuff here that shows how the series has evolved over the last decade or so, with new features in Road Craft we haven't seen before, and some tried and tested ones making an appearance from previous games (somehow I missed out on Expeditions but it's on my 'to do' list, but I've very much enjoyed Snow Runner and Mud Runner respectively).
When you do get behind the wheel of the first large vehicle you get to control, a rusty old bulldozer, you start to get a sense of what the game requires. Precision control, and ticking off a task to the very letter in order to succeed and net yourself some much needed cash and progression.
By the end of the tutorial you'll be taking control of gigantic cranes, easing concrete flood defence wall sections into place like a pro, but the journey there is fraught with uncertainty. TBH any game that insists you use every single button - and combination of those buttons - to control something is akin to remembering the good (bad) old days of Microprose simulators where the game manual was thick enough to make your poorly constructed shelving system in your teenage room come crashing down around your ears unceremoniously in the middle of the night. This time though all the prompts are on screen as you play, but (for example) when driving some of the more complex vehicles - or worse, when you now have to MANUALLY load materials onto a truck using a crane, it's a lot like trying to rub your stomach and pat your head at the same time while simultaneously driving a car and juggling ten sticks of dynamite.
BUT around 3 hours in I'm beginning to really enjoy the journey, and the possibilities of 'acing' each challenge (around 93% on the tutorial level so I'm wondering what I've missed).
It's a slow game, there's no massive onslaught of frenetic action here but you're always working against the clock with an eye on whatever disaster is unfolding around you. On the PS5 between performance and graphics mode there's not a great deal in it (I always opt for the smoother frame rate over the pretties as my eyes are knackered anyway) but I'm sure PS5 Pro owners will insist everything looks shinier on their rigs, and high-end PC owners will undoubtedly remark on how gorgeous it all looks on their rigs that cost more than my car.
Ultimately if you really love what this team do, you're really going to love Road Craft too but if like me you hark back to your childhood and a love of diggers, bulldozers and big trucks, you're going to feel like a kid again playing this.
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