We need to say at this point that all the vehicles we drove seemed to get damaged way too easily, and for not much of an impact. You can choose to play the game in either casual or hardcore mode, which ramps up fuel consumption and damage. Completing a map will earn you progression points that open up new maps or vehicles. There are also some utility vehicles that can be used for jobs like loading trucks or even winching another one out of thick mud. Then there are the trucks for haulage, which you can add a number of different trailers too. The pickups and jeeps are really designed for exploration, opening up some of the map you can't see and letting you do some recon to see how bad the mud is. Most of them are customisable with the pick-ups able to add bumpers and roof racks, and the trucks getting different trailers. That adds to beautiful engine sounds, especially that stunning beauty: the V8. The look of all the playable vehicles is great, especially the new American models. In terms of the new vehicles, there's a Hummer along with the Ford F150 and even a Chevie. One bad move can leave many minutes of planning and trucking in ruin. This all may sound a little daunting, and it is. You have the option in many of the vehicles to play with the differential lock and four-wheel drive capacity, but this all affects fuel consumption, so the more time you spend using gas in the mud, the less likely you are to deliver your load.

You can watch your tyres furiously spinning as you make absolutely zero progress, and at the same time enjoy every frustrating minute of it. Luckily for everyone, then, that Spintires has some of the most realistic mud effects we've ever seen in a video game. The main challenge comes from the fact that most of the time you have to do this in thick mud. What we have here is a trucking sim where you have to deliver cargo (usually timber) while conserving fuel and not getting damaged. We joked about the title, but to be honest, it's pretty accurate. Coming nearly a year after Spintires: Mudrunner landed, we now have the American Wilds Edition, a complete package including the original game, all of the extra content, along with the American Wilds expansion. However, it's at this point that we need to add that these days there's a sim to suit almost every taste.

When you look at the title, it conjures up images of a high-octane rally driving with spinning tyres ripping it up through mud in the heartlands of the American frontier.

Mudrunner progression points