Welcome to our review of Snow Runner, a game I quit playing within the hour due to being frustrated at how the camera moved.
Get in the driver’s seat of powerful vehicles as you conquer extreme open environments with the most advanced terrain simulation ever. Drive 40 vehicles from brands such as Ford, Chevrolet and Freightliner as you leave your mark on an untamed open world. Explore immense open worlds and feel the total freedom of driving in the wild. Discover new locations, dozens of missions, challenging contracts, and leave your mark in these untamed lands.
Carry heavy hauls and extreme payloads by overcoming mud, torrential waters, snow, and frozen lakes for huge rewards and unlockables. Expand and customize your fleet with many upgrades and accessories including purchasing intake snorkels, attaching chains to your tires, adjusting the ride height, and much more. Ride solo or with up to four players in co-operative multiplayer and enrich your SnowRunner experience with community-created mods!
Snow Runner is in itself a very decent attempt at what it promises, the game is just plagued with the most horrible camera I have encountered in the past 20 or so years. I am sadly not even exaggerating as that is really how it felt. It does this unusual pan out movement instead of just move the point of the camera or rotate the view. It is incredibly annoying and it frustrated the living daylights out of me. So much that I quit the game after approximately 100+ times saying the F word.
In a world with games like Overpass proving the genre of accurate driving and skill-based mechanics can work flawlessly, I just wonder why this game felt so unfinished. As the mechanics are not that bad, using a pull to get out of a bind. Getting your vehicle stuck in the mud or water, taking damage from driving into trees or other objects, everything is present. There really is an abundance of options.
At first, you got to go pick up wood to help rebuild a bridge. So you drive to the watchtower, where this full-blown DUMB animation is supposed to give you a proper view of the area, but hell no, that mechanic is an utter waste of time. Either my game was borking on me, but if that was the intention… Hell no!
Most of my gameplay, I was either stuck in the mud, cursing out loud or just plain ready to throw my controller at the TV. That is in short my experience with this game. I got this game’s review code and I am grateful for it, but seriously, most of my time, things just felt below sub-par.
In conclusion, I hated the time spent with this game and my score reflects this. If they fixed that awkward and glitchy camera, I might give it another try, but for now, I stand behind this harsh score.
