Expeditions: A Mudrunner Game Switch Review

I’ve done a lot of traveling around this great Southern Land, and sometimes that meant taking the road less traveled in my trusty 4-wheel drive, or “Fourby” as we say here in Aus. Sometimes it’s a precise art, carefully mapping out your path and following the tracks left in the sand or mud, and sometimes it’s a bit of the ol’ “She’ll be right mate as you go hell-bent for leather and make your own path. Focus Interactive seemed to know this feeling well and decided that not all car games have to be a racing one, and seemingly made offroading a strategy game. What’s it Like? Let’s put it in low range, lock the differential, and fasten your seatbelt as we review Expeditions: A Mudrunner Game for Nintendo Switch

It’s hard to define what genre of game Expeditions falls under. Part Survival, part Rally (albeit at a slower pace,) and part Strategy, it manages to successfully pull the best parts of these genres and combine them into a unique experience, challenging the player to critically think about how to reach and approach objectives. If you fail to plan, you plan to fail, and this novice was caught out several times by running out of fuel, not surveying my path properly and flipping my truck, and generally just beating the crap out of my car with poor choices. Once I started to properly understand how the game should be played, I found myself conquering the vast wilds, and building my confidence up, only to be sent on a new expedition that would knock me down a few pegs. While this approach may seem like a frustration in trial and error, Expeditions simply made me want to do it better the next time, and I went from cautiously creeping over rocks and boulders, to towing out flipped vehicles to safety, guiding the way for NPC’s who bit off more than they can chew. You can even deploy multiple vehicles in case you yourself need to recover some hardware after an overambitious hill climb.

To aid you on these expeditions, you will have a myriad of items that you have by default, and some optional ones to pack should you have the space for them (and trust me… make the space.) Your default gear is a drone for surveying, a winch which is essential, a depth sounder, and Binoculars. Unlike some games that give you these as an optional way of assisting you, you will use these items nearly every time you jump in your vehicle. The winch can be automatically deployed, latching onto the nearest tree and helping you out of a sticky situation, or if things are less dire, you can take your time and choose your anchor point, as well as what to anchor to, which is the only way to flip and tow other explorers out of danger. Other items include a Jack to flip you upright, and anchor points allowing you to use the winch when there isn’t a tree in sight.

This progression is a very rewarding experience and gave me a sense of accomplishment. It’s somewhat akin to a Souls-like game where you aren’t expected to come out of the gate an expert, rather every expedition is a lesson that makes you better bit by bit. Each of the main expeditions are served in the form of contracts, with a little bit of background narrative to flesh it out, and they will be the basis of the core gameplay loop. There are 3 Biomes that are Little Colorado, essentially a training area, Arizona, a sprawling Grand Canyon that will put your skills through their paces, and The Carpathian Mountains in Europe, which is a heavily wooded and undulating area full of pined trees and obstructions. During your expeditions, you will find additional missions to take you further off the beaten track, such as exploring certain areas, delivering supplies, and even rescuing other vehicles. When you stumble upon a side quest, you can do it on the spot, or come back to it when you feel like it. The main quests typically involve investigating areas or performing specialist tasks, some consisting of mini-games that kind of feel superfluous, relegating investigations to stopping a slider in a specific area or navigating a drone overhead to survey the land, but they are still fairly fun and don’t overstay their welcome.

You can also unlock gateways and outposts which I guess could be compared to mini areas that differ from the main biome. One such Gateway sent me on an expedition to see a gold rush town and find a gold nugget while navigating some fairly unforgiving terrain. These missions seem to reward you much higher and also prove to be a difficult challenge to make it all worthwhile. Another one of these missions saw me lugging Sizmology equipment up a hillclimb, forcing me to depend almost solely on my winch. I ran out of fuel after I had done the first part of the quest, and thankfully, could deploy my drone to explore the rest of the surrounding area.

Some of these side quests proved to be an interesting distraction, and a lot of these turned into my greatest adventures. At one stage, I discovered an overturned armoured vehicle yet as I didn’t have the right gear for the job, I marked it and completed my current objective. I then upgraded my truck to a long haul build with several additional fuel storage racks and a heavier-duty winch to go back and rescue it. So began an hour-long journey carefully plotting out my path to recover the vehicle to one of the forward operating bases. It’s the moments like this that prove to be the most exciting, and while the more scripted missions are usually well executed in themselves, the excitement of discovery is hard to top, especially when the reward is something like a new vehicle to unlock, or a new expedition specialist to assist you in future endeavors.

The customisation as mentioned above is another standout point of Expeditions, as you can buy roof racks and slot them with fuel and repair parts, as well as upgrade engines, differentials, tires, and even cosmetics. The majority of these upgrades will impact your expeditions and much like planning your climbs and descents, having the right gear for the job will be the difference between a successful mission, or rolling off a cliff leading to an extensive recovery job, or a high recovery bill.

While all of this sounds like a gushing review thus far, Expeditions is not without its issues on the Nintendo Switch. The graphics suffer from blur while in docked mode while maintaining a consistent framerate, whereas Handheld mode looks sharp but sometimes drops well below the 30 FPS benchmark. I found the blurriness not too distracting once I was absorbed into the game and would say due to the detail of the environments, the graphics are comparable to how the Switch handles The Witcher 3. It’s all incredibly detailed, let down by the fluctuating resolution that even the AMD Sharpening tech can’t help at times. That being said there are a lot of intricate details at play, such as mud sticking to your tires, wheels slipping, and deforming mud and terrain that visibly indents the more you drive on it, sometimes leaving you to get bogged down. For my vision-impaired explorers, there aren’t any accessibility options outside of brightness, so further research may be required to see if Expeditions is for you. You can click a button on the map screen to skip time though, meaning as soon as duck sets you simply click L3 and it’s morning again making your expeditions constantly well-lit. All of this is backed up by a rustic score that kicks in during certain moments of gameplay, and it is largely forgettable as it plays second fiddle (pun intended) to the sounds of your truck crawling over rocks or battling through the dense scrub.

Interestingly enough in Australia, the digital copy is almost $20 more expensive than the physical copy, coming in at $64 for the cartridge and $84 for the digital. Whichever way you choose, there’s definitely a lot of gameplay to keep you going. I hit 25 hours for the purposes of this review and have barely scratched the surface only completing 20 or so main expeditions out of 80 as well as only a handful of side quests to unlock some more vehicles and gear, it’s safe to say that it would take you 100+ hours to complete the game. The maps are vast and full of things to explore and quests to complete that aren’t listed in your main quests, which can divert you for an hour or two just to complete a single one. I can’t wait to spend some more time this weekend testing out my new armored PUG, and planning another rescue mission to unlock another truck for purchase.

As we are getting close to the peak of this hillclimb of a review, Expeditions is an incredibly fun game that despite the almost boring sounding premise, is an intricate strategy and survival type game that requires a lot of thought, patience, and determination. It’s a rewarding and exciting experience that managed to keep me engaged my entire time playing it. It may have some shortfalls with the resolution, but the detailed worlds are still easy to get lost in, and while I know the slower pace might not be for everyone, I highly recommend it to anyone sitting on the fence. Expeditions: A Mudrunner Game, has been a fantastic adventure I’m happy to have been lost in.

So What’s It Like? Expeditions is Like Death Stranding, mixed with V-Rally.

I award it, an 82/100