Russian Off Road Simulator HD

Off-road races present different challenges when it comes to handling and negotiating turns, because it’s not as simple as braking and accelerating at the right time. The difference lies in the terrain, because it makes everything much tougher when the car is never getting enough grip. On top of that, there’s always the risk of an accident when the track is non-existent.

Russian Off Road Simulator HD is a pretty relaxing driving game that features UAZ vehicles and a large, open map for you to explore at will. You can also participate in missions and put your agility to the test through a variety of obstacles, including mud, steep hills and the usual holes in the ground. On the other hand, the actual simulation is very poor and annoying sometimes.

To begin with, the cars react poorly to your input, since you often find yourself unable to accelerate, even when the terrain is flat and smooth under your wheels. This also makes it pretty difficult to get out of sticky situations, literally, because you lose traction entirely whenever you get stuck in a puddle. To make things work, the reset button basically respawns the car almost in the same place.

The missions are very repetitive and annoying as well, but that wouldn’t be a problem if the driving itself was fun. In spite of the map’s size, most of the environment looks the same, thus making exploration a bit redundant. Hence, you are not left with too much to do, especially when the driving simulation is so poorly coded and exasperating.

Lastly, at least the graphics are fairly nice, especially when it comes to special effects. On the other hand, there’s a lot of clipping and other visual artifacts, depending on which camera you use. You could overlook these annoyances if the gameplay was worth it, but when you are constantly kept from having fun, these flaws become a lot more apparent.

In the end, Russian Off Road Simulator HD had a pretty good starting point, but the development took a wrong turn somewhere, because the result is a game that’s way too annoying to play. Hence, it’s not really worth your time when there are other, much better simulators out there.