There are elements here to enjoy, but the cons outweigh the pros and left me in the worst place a game can – bored.
There’s a very simple pleasure to be found in this franchise. Going from A to B through incredibly adverse driving conditions with vehicles and loads on barely drivable roads is quite delightful in its own way.
Unfortunately, where MudRunners and SnowRunners kept me engaged for a long while and are two games that I thoroughly enjoy playing to this day, I really struggled to stick to Expeditions. Quite honestly, for the first time in this franchise, I was bored.
Saber Interactive have put out some really fun games, but this one felt like a very unfortunate miss.
I will say though, as a positive, if you’re looking for another game that is essentially challenging driving over rough terrain, this is absolutely up your street. If your biggest takeaway from the previous two games in this franchise was just enjoying the driving challenge and navigating your way around, then that is still here, and it’s still competently done. If less competently than its prior outings.
The game feels marred by poor textures and dull mission layouts.
Where I struggled in particular with the game was with the mission design and the lack of polish. Alas, that was enough for me to feel less than engaged for most of my playtime. It feels like a technical step back, with less developed terrain and vehicle physics.
I’m curious to know if this was actually intended as a mobile game because it has that sort of feel too it. The way the UI is laid out, how missions are structured, how the inventory is set up and what the new pieces of equipment do.
No longer do you find missions and play them out from one place, instead starting a mission from the menu and then picking your vehicle, equipment and further add-ons before heading out into the world. There are small side missions you can stumble across; setting up wildlife cameras and that sort of thing, but it amounts to very little.
The missions are set from the menu now rather than a series of missions being available to switch between in-map.
And it is a shame because I was really interested in Expeditions. I really wanted to like it, as well; beyond most times I’d have been inclined to drop a game, I stuck it out to keep trying to find the kernels of gold.
I will give the game some credit, I don’t like a wholly pessimistic approach where it isn’t warranted and there are some genuinely good ideas here.
The Carpathian map is a really nice one to do missions in, the new items like the anchor to create a winch point anywhere and the jackscrew to right yourself when you flip to reset in an area you choose within a small circle around you are good features I hope come to a future game.
The Carpathian map is easily the best of the current selection.
There are gameplay elements like the lowering of pressure in tires to get around more varied terrain that add a nice little element over just different kinds of tires being marginally better on different kinds of terrain. The winch now also works more like an actual winch, you can release length of cable allowing you to perform quite nifty feats such as mounting an anchor on a steep incline and lowering your car down it.
These are features I do want to see make a return.
The new items have a pretty good variety and add some genuinely novel gameplay changes I hope remain in the franchise.
And some of the expedition missions really do require a bit of thought like this. Not difficult puzzles per se but you can usually find better routes around the place using these tools.
There are little things to find around the world maps you can go into a “free play” mode to find all of if the expeditions you go on take a different path to them. You can spy these from a distance with binoculars and, when you get closer to an area, you can use the drone to look around in a fairly wide bubble around you.
I’m interested to see what new areas the season pass may take us to and what new vehicles we’ll get to explore it. Along with new gameplay features, pieces of equipment and the like; in a year, this might be a really solid game with plenty of content.
More vehicles would certainly be welcome, but at least this garage will feel pretty familiar to returning players.
As it stands now, though, I honestly don’t think I’d recommend this to anyone but the most die-hard fans and people who really enjoy that difficult driving sort of schtick. Even then, in both those camps, I feel like there’ll be elements here that just get under their skins.
Expeditions feels like a miss, to me. It doesn’t keep me engaged to play it, it feels a bit slapdash and awkward, the physics feel off and there were just elements too it that really didn’t feel great to play. From the big like the way missions are done to the small in the way the gearstick sound honestly made me want to grind my teeth together – it was disappointing and frustrating in many different aspects.
There is something here that could be expanded on, and I’ll keep my eyes on it, especially after how much fun I’ve had with the franchise as a whole. At present, though, Expeditions isn’t doing anything much at all for me.
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