You can play in the main sandbox mode or in Challenges mode on your own in single-player, link up with a friend for some local co-op or form a team of log-carrying pros online. It’s an experience that takes the easiest of tasks and makes it a battle with the laws of physics, but the elation you get when you finally traverse a pothole-filled road somehow gives you the incentive to try the next gauntlet. And let’s not get started on reversing the trailer into a designated area. Backing your rig up to the trailer is one, and attempting to pull your vehicle out of the bog with your winch is another. Each of the truncated locations in these challenges isn’t particularly large, but it’s the small obstacles that keep you keep occupied.
Known simply as ‘The Rig’, this seemingly simple affair requires you to drive a lorry rig to a nearby shack, attach a trailer and deliver said cargo to a location on the other side of the map. Rather than just driving around a series of locales in Russia and North America (the latter is DLC which is included with the main game), delivering logs and battling poor road maintenance, you’re given a specific task and a set of objectives to meet – or pitfalls to avoid.
It’s here you’ll get a good feel for the more open and freedom-rich world of the main game. Once you clear Spintires’ simple tutorial, you’re coaxed into trying out a series of missions. Take the game’s opening Challenge mode as a good example. It turns something as simple as escaping a puddle into an unexpectedly engrossing mixture of careful adjustment and gradual momentum. Driving a lorry and need to get up a muddy hill that’s turned into a bog? Better fire your winch and pull yourself up while steadily putting on the revs. Want to traverse a particularly rocky trail with your 4x4? Better take off your handbrake, enable all-wheel drive and lock your differentials so every wheel is turning together to stop your vehicle from tipping over and out of control. Your vehicle – there are 30 to collect and drive, ranging from pickup trucks to massive rigs – doesn’t slide about like a postman on black ice, but moves and reacts just like a real motor. Spintires isn’t a glamorous experience, but it’s one that turns something as simple as navigating a slushy hole in the road into a tense and nail-biting experience. Now, we know on paper the idea of driving a truck along a muddy track, delivering logs from forest to lumber mill might sound dull, but that’s because you haven’t actually tried it.
0 kommentar(er)
