Heavy Duty Challenge – Review

Take to the hills and prepare for a challenge that’s sure to weigh you down, as you tackle rough terrain and obstacles in a range of off-road trucks in a variety of locations as you battle the environment one step at a time.

When I first caught glimpse of Heavy Duty Challenge, I had visions of Snowrunner (easily my favourite off-road truck simulator ever), while there’s a few vague similarities, Heavy Truck Challenge is a different style of challenge which reminds me more of trials bikes, as you move from marker to marker passing all manner of obstacles as you go.

Straight from the off, you’re thrown into career mode, there’s no multiplayer options, or casual modes, you’ll have to jump straight into the cab and tackle the first few tests in the learning area. this starter location is pretty straight forward, each gate is marked with a green and red flag, so you carefully manoeuvre between the two before edging forwards towards the next gate.
Finish the course, collect your tea and scones and celebrate for a minute before you head off to the next course.
This starter area was pretty straight forward, a few bumps, a couple of logs and some awkward rocks to bypass, but nothing too challenging, it’s enough to get to grips with controlling your truck and learning how to position it for some tougher obstacles.

controls are straight forward, with the Right trigger accelerating, then A and X going up and down through your gears, with Y and B switching between driving modes, there’s a choice between standard, all-wheel drive, and locked/unlocked differential so axles move independently, but sadly it’s a bit of a missed opportunity, even working through to reach the toughest challenges, I was still able to move the gear and drive type, to the top setting and manage most of the course with only careful feathering of the throttle when necessary.

Unlike the aforementioned Snowrunner and its predecessor Mudrunner, Mud isn’t really a problem with Heavy Duty Challenge, actually it doesn’t matter how heavy duty the trucks might be, because they’ll never sink into the ground, or get stuck in thick mud, they’ll just bounce of the solid floor.

Once you’ve got used to the control scheme, you’ll find you’re through the learning sectoin with ease, and you can head to the garage, I’m not sure if I had some early-access privileges (to test all trucks), or if the games just really generous, but I had over a million credits, which was enough to buy all 12 trucks and reinforce each of them.
It’s really not necessary to splash the cash so early, as within each class, the 4 truck options all drive pretty much identically.

The three classes are 2, 3 and 4 axel vehicles (4, 6 and 8 wheelers), obviously the number of tires can have quite an impact, but I decided to start in the middle and take a 6-wheel truck out for a spin after a few test runs with the 4 and 8 wheelers.

Next up is the Disenchanted Forest, and you’re given the option to free-roam this area to further get to grips with a range of obstacles you’ve likely to face, but sadly this is where the game metaphorically breaks down, stalls and sets itself on fire.
This open world area is awful, there’s no signs telling you where to go, no sense of direction, no little glowing markers, and you’re forced to drive around aimlessly hoping to come across the 5 numbered gates, struggling to see anything because the graphical performance gets stuck in the mud, with trees, rocks and everything in between popping in and out of view even at closer distances, this one section alone almost forced me to rage quit – it really is that bad, but after 45 minutes of retrying and aimlessly venturing around the map, I somehow came across gate 5, which finally let me finish the level and finally move on to the meat of the game.
I could tolerate this area being an extra that you can free-roam in at your own peril, but forcing players to experience this, leaves a sour taste in the mouth and sadly a lot of people are likely to turn off, uninstall and move away at this point, long before the game really gets moving.

After this, it’s literally a whole different game, texture pop-in is minimal, you revert back to the more linear courses, with clear to see, signposted gates and objectives, and the game not only pulls itself into first gear, it comfortably reaches beyond expectations as you work through 11 locations in 3 championships.

Each Championship is built up by 3 or 4 locations, with each location split into three sections, after completing the three sections in the first area, you’ll pick up your trophy before moving on to the next event in the championship.

At any time, you can head into the garage and spend credits to reinforce and repair your truck, as every bump will gradually damage your truck. There’s also a selection of upgrades for each truck, such as shifting weight forward or back, increasing the horsepower of your engine or getting better tires with more grip, but thankfully these are obtained with XP, from using the truck for races.
It means that endless supply of cash didn’t cheat through, but after winning a few events, I was some able to grab those upgraded tires and a steering boost, which seemed to work well to help with more difficult obstacles.

While I’d say the game is on the easier side, once you get used to handling the truck, there’s still a nice steady challenge, rocks stick out, bridges are often only just wide enough for your wheels to fit, and you’ll need to swing your truck around at just the right angle to get the right entry for gates and bridges, while trying not to take too much damage. Reaching the end in a quick time, or with lots of points, only impacts the leaderboards to compare to others, and the amount of XP you gain, so you’ll find yourself with a bronze trophy minimum (just for completing them) which means progress is consistent.
I always found myself able to complete at least 2-4 sections before deciding to repair, but with top gear working fine and no mud forcing low gears, I was able to concentrate more on the positioning rather than having to worry about the movement as a whole.

At times, Heavy Duty Challenge does feel a little arcade-like, after the awful open world, all levels are the smaller areas which are usually done in a few minutes. I would have loved to see a full “Simulation” option, which added mud, (proper Snowrunner mud) which forced you into the lowest gear to slowly trundle through, because it would have added a completely different challenge to the game without alienating those who will no doubt appreciate things being a little more straight forward.

While there’s some major graphical issues with the open world level, the rest of the game wasn’t too bad at all, there’s no fancy lighting, no amazing physics, and the scenery looks more Xbox One (and at times Xbox 360) than Series X or S, but after the pop-in in the forest, everything ran near-perfect and while it could have looked considerably better, (like Snowrunner) it’s effective enough, except for that awful start, my major ongoing gripe was the awful camera options, which force you to use one of a handful of views from inside the cab, with the only external view way to close to the truck, meaning it’s only really good for making sure your wheels are lined up on those tricky bridges.

It works well enough, but we’ve had driving games since the 90’s giving us a near, and far follow option as well as a cab and bumper cam and those 4 would have all been better than blocking half the screen with any of the options we have at the moment.

Unlike the graphics, audio didn’t really catch my attention, it’s all a little bland, with similar droning engine sounds and a few bumps and cracks as you bounce across the obstacles. There’s enough going on to stop silent, but it’s fair to say it could have been considerably better.

Finally at just under £30, it’s not bad value, it’s not going to please Snowrunner purists, but anyone looking for a fun, rewarding Heavy Duty Challenge, will find a good-few evenings of enjoyment, once you get past the awful early stage.

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