Category: Video Games

MudRunner and SnowRunner may share the word we apply to humans and animals moving as quickly as they physically can but, rest assured, nothing about this series is rapid. That is, if you do find yourself moving particularly fast in these excellent, deliberately slow-paced, sandbox-style off-road driving simulators, there’s a strong chance it’s only because you’re tumbling down a mountainside.

Expeditions: A MudRunner Game is no different in this regard; it’s all about trundling over the terrain at turtle speeds. Victory is earned by staying upright and clawing your way through punishing environments that want nothing more than to tug your trucks deep into the ground – or topple them over. Where Expeditions is different is in the more untamed maps, and its mission design – which is now less about hauling goods and more about exploring the woods, so to speak. The good news is that Expeditions is a satisfying and worthwhile twist on the MudRunner/SnowRunner experience, even if mission objectives can get a little formulaic and frustratingly gated at times.

Again, while the core of both MudRunner and SnowRunner is really the challenge of moving bulky cargo and building materials down the sorts of muddy roads that would give a hippopotamus a hernia, Expeditions is a bit of a sidestep. For one, in terms of roads, there really aren’t any. Expeditions’ great looking environments – Colorado, Arizona, and Central Europe’s Carpathian Mountains – are basically just slabs of total wilderness. Rocky deserts, soggy gulches, dense forest, muddy rivers; it’s a nice spectrum. There are occasional signs of civilisation – say, perhaps some camping equipment, or a ferry, or a dilapidated bridge there to remind us that we haven’t been hurled back in time – but essentially Expeditions simply plonks us in the middle of nowhere.

That, in turn, informs the mission design. Sure, the vehicles feel the same as they have in the series to date as they wallow and churn through the physics-based, delightfully deformable muck, but instead of lugging lorries full of concrete slabs or lumber from point A to point B, Expeditions’ objectives are rooted in research and exploration. That may be trucking some seismic or meteorological equipment to an isolated spot, or it may be sniffing out an old aircraft wreck, or hunting down a dinosaur fossil. The simple inspection and scanning quick-time events that accompany reaching a destination feel mostly pointless, but I guess they’re slightly better than some kind of passive or non-interactive notification. That said, I will admit to being confused by their instructions occasionally, and only stumbling on the solution by looking around until I accidentally discover it. For instance, a prompt to “take a picture of the island” seems a bit vague and ill-considered when none of the things that look like islands in the vicinity are what it’s referring to (and completing the task requires us to zoom in on a large… mountain).

Truckin’ Problems

More annoying, however, is the way that some of the objectives are gated. For instance, sometimes mission goals are masked behind an “explore the area” requirement, which places a circle on the map screen and asks us to unshroud the area by exploring it. Hitting 100% will then trigger the next step in the mission. It’s a little arbitrary and repetitive, but I have found it’s been generally straightforward to 100% a zone by using Expeditions’ new drone feature (as flying the drone around uncovers the area just the same as driving around it does).

That is, until it wasn’t, and I was stuck inching my way back and forward across a marked area – at 97%, then 98%, and then an agonising 99% discovered – trying to find the sliver I’d missed. It took forever. Missed sections really need to be more evident on the map screen in this instance. It was simply not clear at all what part of this zone I hadn’t seen. Perhaps a different colour? Anything at all?

It was a particular problem in this mission because I wasted so much fuel schlepping around trying to find the last three percent that I ran out just 40 metres from the final objective and needed to replay the entire mission again. Well over an hour flushed down the drain. It is a relief that, once uncovered, areas don’t need to be re-explored on follow-up mission attempts – but redoing all of that initial navigation to pick up where you left off is extremely time-consuming and it’s not similarly rewarding the second time around.

The map system probably just needs a little more finessing in general, to be honest – particularly for anybody new to the series, it’s a sore spot. It’s odd, for instance, that some objective locations are not marked with a simple icon and require us to scroll to the objective on the map screen and have the cursor automatically place itself over the mystery spot we need to go, just so we can manually place our own navigation point. It’s an unnecessary step, and my prediction is that some people will simply be confused by the lack of an initial marker.

That would be a shame, too, because Expeditions is broadly a more approachable game than the likes of MudRunner and SnowRunner. I do feel a little railroaded here in Expeditions, in contrast to SnowRunner’s less restrictive design, as missions are only unlocked in a very specific order. I don’t hate it, but I also don’t think it’s a better system. On the other hand, I wouldn’t be surprised if the way missions are trickled out gives new players a more overt sense of progression.

One of Expeditions’ better ideas is a new crew member system that functions as a range of perks to give us a boost in certain situations, like resistance to specific damage or increased range for tools. Hiring them cuts into your profits, but it’s a tradeoff I found well worthwhile. It felt inessential at first, but before long I’d come to appreciate the bonuses afforded when bringing along certain staff. Certainly being able to embed ground anchors twice as far away makes them far more useful. There’s some light base-building in here too, but it seems expensive and so far I’ve mostly ignored it in favour of heavily modifying my trucks instead.

Those ground anchors are just one of the new tools that make taking on the terrain of the maps slightly less intimidating. Ground anchors can be instantly drilled and sunk into the rock or dirt to provide winch points when there aren’t any trees within range, and a depth sounder can be pinged to indicate when water is too deep to ford. The jack screw, in particular, almost feels like a cheat; it’s a tool that will painlessly right an overturned vehicle. You’d better believe I wasn’t too proud to use it, though. It’s certainly a handy device to have in your back pocket when things go pear-shaped after 90+ minutes of hard slogging.

At its trickiest, Expeditions is still a very challenging game, though, with a ton of important decisions to make at every turn. Do you lock the diff? Do you drop some tyre pressure? Do you have enough fuel to burn up a barrel of it hauling yourself up a hill that would haunt a mountain goat? This is Expeditions’ constant dance, and this is where it succeeds best. Every creek bed conquered, or mountain mastered, or valley vanquished is its own small victory.

Too Sunk to Truck

If you’re under the impression that, as a spin-off, Expeditions is some kind of smaller, low-fat SnowRunner experience, it’s not. With dozens of missions that can take anywhere from 20-odd minutes to the “very hard” ones that will potentially take several hours, it’s a very long game with a tremendous amount to do. Based on my current rate of progress, at around 40 hours, the main thread of missions alone is going to take me well over 100 hours to fully check off. Adding the side missions and other discoveries dotted around the map, I’d struggle to even estimate it. New side missions can be triggered and tracked immediately upon finding them in the world, too, which is a nice fix from SnowRunner.

That said, some of that bulk is inflated by the trial-and-error nature of Expeditions. It’s inevitable that sometimes you’ll bring an imperfect vehicle out on a job; one that won’t be able to cope with the specific challenges of the best (or perhaps only) route. Sometimes giving up and returning to base to upgrade your truck with a higher snorkel to prevent water damage, or more spare parts to build bridges across treacherous parts of the maps, is the only way forward. More horsepower isn’t always the solution. That is, sometimes it really doesn’t matter how many horses you have if you’re still on the wrong side of the river.

It’s curious that Expeditions doesn’t support co-op out of the gate, particularly as MudRunner and SnowRunner do, and Expeditions is clearly built on the same base. Presumably there’s a reasonable explanation, but the good news is that the developers have confirmed that co-op is coming at an unspecified later date. Just be aware that it’s not here presently in case that’s crucial for you.

The pressure of an annual release schedule can be a curse for big sports series like WWE 2K – look no further than the maligned 2K20 to see why, a game so rough it actually forced publisher 2K to take two years off and regroup, which led to the redesign that got it to the much better place it’s in today. In many ways, WWE 2K24 seems like the final form of this new vision for the series. Some nagging bugaboos persist, like this year’s Showcase mode that suffers from the inability to recreate genuine moments in wrestling history in video game form, while also trying to rewrite that history. And yet, It’s marginally better in almost every other way than the last two, touting small but smart additions to well-tested systems and modes as opposed to taking bigger risks.

It doesn’t take long to see that the title for “Best Looking Wrestling Game” is still locked firmly in the hands of the 2K series. There are far fewer wrestlers that have outdated gimmicks this time around, and besides a couple noticeable exceptions, all of the top stars look just like their real-life counterparts, from their signature hair dos to the details of their gear and tattoos. The few that are clear misses, like Bayley, make you wonder if they even used the same tech to get people like Asuka so right. Announcers who have special flourishes for particular wrestlers also belt them out here, so Samantha Irving’s nasally “ChElSeA GrEeEeEnNnN” lives immortalized in this game. Referees even resemble the ones you can see on weekly television instead of just generic stand-ins, which was maybe not a necessary change but is a welcome one considering they are also recurring characters, even if they aren’t the center of attention.

When you dig past the looks and into its mechanics, you’ll need to sift through 2K24 with a fine-toothed comb to find significant differences between this and last year’s edition. The biggest addition is the Super Finisher, which lets you spend three finisher stocks to do a bigger, badder version of your finisher. These live up to their moniker, as I never had to worry about someone kicking out of them, though it might take more work than its worth to build up that many stocks since every second you spend in a match is one where the tides can turn against you. There’s also a new trading blows minigame that appears infrequently and unprompted, usually in the early goings of a match. You take turns attempting to fill (but not overfill) a gauge at increasing speeds and whoever fails to fill their gauge correctly or runs out of stamina becomes open to a big attack. I was never happy to see this minigame as it’s an abrupt shift in the action and any advantage gained didn’t feel match-changing – but it’s also barely shown up in almost 20 hours, so I don’t think it’s a sign of the minigame bloat the series was experiencing several years ago, either.

All the other little tweaks are pretty subtle. There are cute new weapon options like microphones and smaller objects can be thrown now, which is a fun and funny way to do damage at range (assuming you don’t struggle too much with how finicky picking weapons up can be throughout 2K24). Non-legal tag team partners can only run in to break up pins or otherwise harass their foes one time before they’re locked out of voluntarily leaving the apron without being tagged in formally. I didn’t get a chance to try that in online multiplayer before launch, but it was a godsend for the various tag matches in the MyRise and Universe modes, since it prevented getting cheesed by an overly aggressive CPU team. New paybacks like Iron Jaw, which shakes off the stunned condition so you’re not vulnerable to uncounterable damage, help vary your strategies, and overall AI improvements mean that managers act noticeably more audaciously in favor of their clients in order to help them win matches. From bell to bell, the wrestling of 2K24 is better than ever, even if it’s not overtly so.

As far as the types of matches you’ll be applying all these techniques in, a few returning types from older games stand out this year. The special guest referee match has the most potential for multiplayer chaos, as one player can choose to control the referee and either enforce the rules fairly, or skew things however they see fit. Referees have full agency over when they count pins, acknowledge submissions, or disqualify obvious cheating. By default, there is a system by which the refs ability to be a lawless menace is regulated, and if you slack on your job too much a new ref will come to take over. But you can also just turn that off, and become the worst friend among your group. Either way, I really liked this feature, and it was the one that made me wish I had a larger pool of people to play with pre-launch the most.

The ambulance and casket matches have similar goals: shove the opponent inside a box that they don’t want to be in, by any means necessary. The former is easily the better version of this concept, as there are way more ways to interact with the ambulance, including using it as part of your gameplan by throwing foes off of it. The casket match feels the most like a regular match with a different way to win, as the coffin just lingers off to the side of the ring waiting for you to deal with it. 2K24 also misses a big opportunity to recreate some infamous moments from this dubious match’s real life history – unfortunately, there’s no way to dance on top of the pine box with cowboy boots HBK-style.

Meanwhile, gauntlet matches come in three flavors, and they are all welcome additions. Whether you choose a pool of superstars who are randomly selected to fight each other individually, battle royal style, or a team for a single wrestler to run through one at a time, gauntlets can be challenging tasks to take on. It’s also the closest you can get to a fighting game-style survival trial, but being limited to only four wrestlers total in any of the gauntlet match types means you can’t really push yourself too far.

MyRise, WWE 2K’s story mode, makes a solid return with two different tales of glorious victory and devastating defeat for your created characters to embark on. I spent most of my time with the Unleashed story, which mirrors some of last year’s themes from “The Lock” campaign of being a big star on the indies and having to basically start over under the WWE umbrella. The second story, Undisputed, revolves around the power vacuum left at the top of the men’s division when current god-king Roman Reigns abdicates the throne after a 1200 day reign to pursue Hollywood. This one felt a little more like a story you would see on actual WWE TV, for good and for ill, as it features more of the familiar drama of evil authority figures and rote wrestling contrivances that keep heroes from their ultimate goals. Both are strong and stuffed with content, including funny gags, returning characters from last year’s stories, and some truly bonkers events that take full advantage of the fact that this sports drama/comedy can be even more unbelievable when you make it a video game. That said, they are maybe over reliant on lots of smaller feuds and matches that feel more like filler episodes than substantive encounters.

For the Showcase mode, the concept of taking a long look back at Wrestlemania’s biggest fights sounds like an easy playlist of matches to collect. But even for a mode that has fundamentally fallen short of its mission to recreate big moments throughout wrestling history in past years, 2K24’s Wrestlemania Showcase fails to meet my already low expectations. The selection of matches, which includes 20 bouts across the 40 years of the event, is full of fights that are simply not as special as they are presented to be. Corey Graves does a lot of good storytelling in between each in order to explain the context surrounding them, which is valuable for some of the matches from the early 90s and 2000s where the “why” gets overshadowed by the “what.” But admittedly good matches like the ones from more recent Manias quite simply don’t measure up to some of the greatest in history, and no amount of retconning what happened will change that.

Taking control of these moments is still more an exercise in checking boxes than it is winning the contest, too. To this year’s credit, you don’t actually have to complete all of the mid-match objectives to progress, which include stuff like hitting a certain number of strikes or a specific power move. You could theoretically treat every match like a regular fight, pin or submit the opponent however you can as fast as you can, and move on. It’s certainly against the spirit of the whole endeavor, but it’s still nice that it doesn’t hold progress hostage behind a frustrating and sometimes arbitrary-feeling set of tasks anymore. The transitions from wrestling game to real match footage are still clever, but also jarring and seemingly more frequent this year. More than once would I complete a task to trigger a cutscene, return to combat, and then warp back into match footage only a move or two later. The impossible task of recreating that feeling you get when watching a historically great match in video game form does not become more possible if you just watch more of the match itself, it turns out.

And for a company so enthralled with its own history, it also seems very afraid of it. Some reasons for that are a bit more understandable than others – like when big moments with long reaching consequences involve criminals or otherwise nefarious people. But a lot of it, like the edited crowd noise and blurred out faces of old referees in vintage footage, reeks of that George Lucas-esque inability to let old things be old. I’m sure many of the notable exclusions are simply rights and licensing conflicts between promotions and wrestlers, but as a person who is not a shareholder or executive in any of these companies, but rather a fan who just wants to see the best of the best celebrated properly, I think moments like Daniel Bryan beating three men across two matches in one night to win the WWE Championship deserves to be lauded just as much as many of the lesser matches that made the cut.

For those who want to book their own WrestleMania moments, Universe Mode and MyGM have you covered. Neither make huge strides forward from last year’s editions, but prospective general managers will find some neat new toys to play with in MyGM. The most interesting to me were the post-PLE trades that allow you opportunities to pass talent between promotions, wheeling and dealing with rivals to get your roster in ship shape for the next stretch of the campaign. Superstars have individual ring levels that can be increased through training and regular booking, which helps them accumulate perks like getting bonus quality points for participating in specific match types or being able to switch classes for free. These granular additions, as well as new general managers to choose from and a big list of new power cards at your disposal to shake things up week to week, truly make for the best MyGM mode yet.

Universe Mode felt much more similar to last year’s in comparison, allowing you to take a bird’s eye view of the booking across the entire WWE Universe, or drill down on the journey of one wrestler in particular. There are a bunch of new rivalry actions and run-ins you can program into your feuds like a Loser Leaves Town match, but I think Universe heads will find that things are largely the same. That’s not necessarily a bad thing considering how robust it was to begin with, but there are still key features missing from the days of old – namely allowing superstars to cut promos on one another – that reminded there is still plenty of room to improve.

AMD might finally be leaning towards AI in its gaming devices, as one company executive touts that 2024 will be a “huge year” for the GPU and CPU maker.

In an interview with the No Priors podcast, AMD CTO Mark Papermaster said that over the last several years, the company has been working on developing its hardware and software capabilities for artificial intelligence, with its gaming hardware finally set to implement AI.

“Well, this is a huge year for us because we have spent so many years developing our hardware and software capabilities for AI,” Papermaster explained. “We’ve just completed AI enabling our entire portfolio: Cloud, edge, PCs, embedded devices, our gaming devices. We’re enabling our gaming devices to upscale using AI, and 2024 is really a huge deployment year for us.”

The creators of Yuzu have settled its lawsuit with Nintendo, agreeing to pay $2.4 million in damages and shutting down support for the popular open-source Switch emulator.

A new document reveals that Tropic Haze will pay Nintendo $2.4 million to settle the lawsuit filed last week. Nintendo sued Yuzu’s developers in U.S. Federal Court, alleging that the emulator is “primarily designed” to circumvent several layers of Switch encryption in order to make it possible to play Nintendo games on devices such as Steam Deck.