MudRunner Is Free On Epic

Warning: The following article contains a link to a video with strong language.

Monday, I wanted to stick my head in the oven thanks to Prime Gaming and Ironcast, and I’ll do the same this Tuesday too. Alexx spoke of Katamari Damacy Reroll now releasing on PS4 and Xbox One. Tuesday, I got a bit happy to see the proper Lara Croft back in games with a new mobile game. Wednesday, Taylor spoke about CoD: Black Ops Cold War being knocked from the top spot of sales charts; meanwhile, I spoke of JRPG I’m excited for (I know!). Thursday, I went on about Ubisoft wanting to fix Watch Dogs: Legion before the release of multiplayer, David spoke of Steam’s latest Autumn sale and the Steam Awards, and Zoë spoke of Square Enix allowing for a permanent work-from-home program. Onto the free game on the Epic Games Store.

Right, time to talk about doing something I wouldn’t advise doing. I’m specifically referring to running in snow up to my knee caps while feeling like i’m about to do Jeremy Clarkson’s ingenious snow measuring trick. I don’t like mud and I don’t like running or driving for that matter. Nonetheless, while playing a bit of MudRunner I can’t help but like it just quite a bit. I think it is another one of those strange (as I call them) Dad-games. The type of thing that is really boring if you plainly explain it, but typically very boring men that could talk about drying paint with such excitement will love it. I should talk to my neighbor about it.

If you think of your Football Manager games and others I’ve described as the prototypical Dad-game, it is a boring idea made fun. MudRunner is a game about driving straight into a field of mud, murk, and other horrible conditions with a 4×4/all-terrain vehicle. Sounds boring, right? However, there is just a bit of joy in winching your way out of a puddle that’s three feet deep and driving off. The problem with that description of the game is how boring it still sounds. There is nothing that will make it exciting or something you must pick up. What MudRunner is doing is one small thing and it does it so well it feels great and enjoyable.

What I find oddly fascinating is just how small the game is compared to the graphical quality, and overall performance. So often, we’ll see the likes of Call of Duty swell to over 100GB with tiny differences in graphical quality. MudRunner looks as you’d expect, and it is less than a 2 GB download. I mentioned it this week, but I’ve been playing more DS games. That’s what this reminds me of; the graphical quality that functions for the time, performance that holds well enough, and game sizes that tiny (about 520 MB for the DS).

All this week, MudRunner is available for free on the Epic Games Store until the 3rd of December. Next week, we’ll be talking about a game I’ve never played and that has just made the pretentious indie gamer in all of you shrivel up and want to kill me. Why do I say pretentious? Well, Cave Story has been ported to several systems released within its lifetime, but also the Sega Dreamcast in 2013, Genesis in 2016, and a graphing calculator. Next week, we’ll be talking about the enhanced edition, Cave Story+ which most recently went to the Nintendo Switch in 2017. Next year it joins Skyrim: Very Special Edition on your smart fridge.

This weekend also sees the Epic Games Store’s Black Friday sales, with prices low on: ScourgeBringer, Raji, Beyond Good and Evil, The Dungeon of Naheulbeuk, Disco Elysium, Kingdoms of Amalur: Re-Reckoning, The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, Mortal Shell, Relicta, Stick It To The Man, Bridge Constructor: The Walking Dead, Hellpoint, and individually the three Shadowrun games. Also on sale are WRC 9, Control, Death Stranding, Dungeons 3, Windbound, Neon Abyss, Hue, Carrion, Dead Cells, Stranger Things 3: The Game, and Tony Haw’s Pro Skater 1+2. I think that’s everything we’ve covered on the site and whatever I think you should 100% play. These are just a few suggestions. The sale runs until the 3rd of December.