SpinTires Review

Have you ever wanted to drive a vehicle through the wilderness? Pondered muddy tracks and thought, I want to take my truck through that. Perhaps dreamt about driving between outposts in the woods delivering goods, traversing some of the roughest terrain available. Well SpinTires is the game for you!

SpinTires lets you do just this, take a jeep, drive through shit, get stuck and winch your way out before finding a big truck just so you can do it all over again while loaded with cargo. Using what I can only describe as witchcraft, the game employs an amazing physics engine where the rough terrain will deform under your tyres, clogging your wheels with mud and generally be a royal pain in your arse as you try to travel around the map attempting to complete the task of delivering lumber to a set point in the game world.

Just to make things a little more tricky, the majority of the map is shrouded in darkness meaning you will have to judge the road conditions and decide which route to take in order to hopefully reach your destination relatively unscathed, switching differentials to suit the path in front of you along with the drivetrain to avoid getting stuck in the mud.

Now these environments and vehicles are all based upon the glorious motherland, home of the Red Cyclone, Zangief. Yes we’re heading to Mother Russia in SpinTires and that was the only way I could reference Street Fighter in a simulation game. So expect big clunky trucks, dense woodland, thick foliage and driving conditions that even the most fearless of Communists would fear to traverse.

As you progress you will uncover new vehicles along with earning upgrades such as big chunky tyres to help plough through the crap or high level exhausts to allow the engine to breathe when taking a dip through a particularly deep river. All this adds to the realism of this simulation title, which in all honesty is what simulation games are about.

You will even have to deploy your truck correctly in order to use the crane manually and load your truck with lumber. All this extra weight will have to be accounted for as you carry on trucking towards your objective as you may find the route you came from, may no longer be viable with the extra tonnage you’re carrying; oh and not to mention the increased fuel consumption you will be facing so I hope you’ve discovered a petrol station on your travels.

To say this game looked simple would be an insult to the developers, I can safely say that Spintires is one of the most challenging and gruelling driving simulators I have ever encountered. Having winched myself out of heart stopping catastrophes on multiple occasions, rescued other players from their mishaps in multiplayer mode along with acting as a mobile fuelling station to quench the thirst of these gas guzzling behemoths. I have never worked so hard in a game ever, not to mention that I’m doing this in casual mode.

Yeah, that’s right, I’ve been playing in casual mode and it’s still bloody harder than a Soviet bear. If you’re feeling particularly brave then you can switch to hardcore mode in which you’re not able to activate the differential lock while using the automatic gearbox, unable to rescue your vehicles to the garage and have an even bigger drinking problem than a coach trip of teenagers to Magaluf.

The game looks wonderful too; the environment is lush, vehicles are detailed and well modelled, plus a proper day/night cycle as you play you get some awesome sights while you drive through the woods as the sun is setting. Light shafts breaking through the trees with that gorgeous orangey-red glow just warms this old man’s heart. If this wasn’t enough to tempt you to take a look, SpinTires also has multiplayer support, so you may have your own little rough terrain convoy going, helping winch the shitters who can’t drive through the mud properly and have your own virtual Top Gear cocking-about special.

So after all this punishment of driving some really shitty conditions to deliver lumber to your destination, the sense of gratification upon completing the job is out of this world, yet I’m left pondering a question. Who in this world wants logs this fucking badly? Also, if this happens in real life then these drivers have balls bigger than our moon.

Spintires tickled your fancy? Well you can head over to http://spintires.com/ and grab the tech demo right now and if this tickles your fancy then support the developers and buy their game either direct from the site or over on Steam.