Buggy Runner

Over the hills
Through the woods
In the mud and snow...

The life of an off road trucker is a harsh one, but as Kurt J. Mac of Youtube and Twitch fame put it "[Snowrunner] is slow, chill, methodical, with a chance for error comedy."  It's also very scenic.  The developers, Saber Interactive, have done a commendable job of making each of the three major regions in the game look distinct.  Thanks to having unique music, they sound distinct too.  The tunes even change depending on the time of day (or night).  That's the macro of Snowrunner, but if you get out the magnifying glass and examine every little detail it becomes obvious that the same design philosophy is applied to the micro as well.

Each of the forty different vehicles in the game is meticulously detailed, both inside and out.  Each has distinct engine sounds, distinct handling characteristics and even a distinct horn.  So, it's basically par for the course compared to any racing game.  However, Snowrunner really isn't a racing game so much as a puzzle game.  Again, on the macro level the player needs to consider which routes to take in order to get cargo where it needs to go.  Often, the shortest route is not necessarily the optimum choice.  There is also fuel consumption to consider.  One of the most difficult choices I found myself making throughout the game was when to bring a truck into the garage for repairs, upgrades, a change of equipment, and full tank of gas versus having to once again make the long drive back out to where it was needed.  Of course, on a micro level there are puzzle elements as well.  Sometimes it can be as simple as dodging potholes and rocks, or doing a bit of cross country driving to avoid a muddy section of dirt road or fallen trees.  Other times it involves doing a bit of experimentation since there's lots of little hidden paths and shortcuts that aren't readily apparent on the map.  Not since Dark Souls have I found a game that rewards exploration to such a degree.  It's not all good times though...

A least on the PS4 version, Snowrunner has a lot of issues.  I have never had a game crash more than once or twice on any PlayStation system until now.  Several patches released by the developers have improved stability, but it's still not great.  I don't want to nitpick though, because the people over on the official forums have done that to death already.  On a more positive note, I do have a little story about that "error comedy" mentioned earlier.

I was doing a convoy system involving a big truck up front, a smaller one in back and wench linking the two of them together.  The one in back was pulling a heavy trailer.  Normally, if one of these trailers gets banged around too hard it will pop off, but simultaneously deploy support legs to make reattaching them a cinch.  Unfortunately (and possibly because it wasn't the truck I was controlling directly at the time), when the trailer popped off after clipping a telephone pole the legs didn't extent.  Hence, reattaching the trailer back to the tow truck wasn't going top be so easy.  Given that one of these things costs 6800 bucks though, I wasn't going to write it off as an acceptable loss.  Instead, I brought over another truck outfitted with a huge crane.  It proceeded to raise the trailer and then set it back down on the tow truck mount...only to have the trailer clip through.  When I switched control over from the crane truck to the tow truck nothing changed.  Both the tow truck and trailer were seemly doing the impossible act of occupying the same space at the same time.  On the bright side though I had placed it close enough that I could try to reattach it anyway.  Again, normally when you do this sort of thing the trailer will jerk into the correct (mounted) position.  It tried to do that, but for some reason collision detection decided to reactivate causing truck and trailer to frantically gyrate for about five seconds before the trailer popped off once more.  This time though, the legs deployed making the next attempt to hook on properly a breeze.

Incidentally, to make some extra cash I've become somewhat of a cowboy trucker; rounding up trailers instead of cattle.  Sometimes I can even haul two (or three) at a time by using a combination of the wench and loading one on top of the other.  I'd go into more detail, but I don't want this blog to get a reputation for especially lurid vehicular content...anyway, back to it!