Most driving games are about speed. The idea is that if you’re not going fast, you’re not having fun. Fair enough. That’s a pretty safe approach. So speed is the basic currency in a driving game.
God has abandoned us and all we can do is continue this pointless, excruciating activity he forced on us before he left. This is the video game version of Camus' Myth of Sisyphus.
"These trucks are on their own. They have no drivers. You cannot angle the camera to look into the cab and see an expressionless character model with his hands perched fingerlessly on the wheel. You will never see a person in this game. People simply don’t exist anymore, or they’ve gone far away. These wildernesses are as empty and still as a crashed server. You won’t see a plane flying overhead. Another car won’t pass you on the road."
I think it's a metaphor for Soviet institutions and infrastructure in the post-Soviet world.
I played this again, yesterday (should I get Mud Runners? Does it add much?) I never went full into Spintires. Also, I noticed they patched driver models into the game, no more survival horror for trucks?
Also, I want a mode where you transport a box of dynamite … I imagine this could go horribly wrong.
After Tom streamed Mud Runners last week, it made me realize one thing that this review didn’t: this game is gorgeous. The mud, the huge tires on all the vehicles, the ponds you drive through, and best of all, the black smoke that these vehicles regurgitate into the world and so lovingly rendered. It’s almost as if the game is making a statement about how we’re ruining this beautiful landscape with our diesel-fueled thick black smoke.