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Roborock Saros Z70 review: a great robot vacuum with a sometimes helpful arm

by admin May 20, 2025

I suspect my dog does not like the Roborock Saros Z70. Unlike the dozens of other robot vacuums that Gus happily lets clean around him while he sleeps, the Z70 keeps stealing his treasures. Not his dog toys — although that could be a future feature — but my family’s socks that he loves to collect and carry around the house with him.

Since the Z70 arrived, he’s had competition. The first robot vacuum with a mechanical arm, the Z70 features a five-axis arm, branded the OmniGrip, that uses onboard sensors and a camera to see, pick up, and tidy away a small list of light items, including the aforementioned socks, footwear such as slippers and sandals, tissues, and paper. In theory, this means I should spend less time picking up after my kids or rummaging in Gus’ bed to find the socks he’s stolen.

The Z70 can take objects it picks up to designated areas, including this box Roborock supplies with the robot.

In practice, it’s nowhere near achieving this goal. Yes, the arm can pick up items and put them away, which is seriously impressive. It collected my son’s discarded socks and a few balls of paper, putting them where I asked it to. But the Z70’s limitations are deal-breakers at this point, and its lack of consistency also lets it down.

For example, while the bot would detect footwear, it nearly always opted not to pick up any shoes, only once retrieving a slipper or sandal of its own volition. It also consistently struggled to place more than one item in the correct spot each time it cleaned.

Still, this is the first consumer robot vacuum to venture into appendage territory, and even in this beta-like stage, it’s remarkable. But for an eye-watering $2,599, the Saros Z70 needs to pick up more than a few socks.

$2599

The Good

Picks up smelly socks
Great vacuum and mop
Excellent navigation
Automatically removes its mops
Low profile gets under most furniture

The Bad

Twenty-six hundred dollars
Fails to pick up most shoes
Can’t see items on carpet
Sometimes misses its target

The Saros Z70 is a flagship robot vacuum that’s a big step up from my current top pick floor sweeper, the Roborock S8 MaxV Ultra. With over twice the suction power, a more advanced navigation and obstacle detection system, and dual spinning mops that it can automatically remove, it’s an impressive cleaner.

However, aside from the arm, it’s essentially the same vacuum as the $1,599.99 Saros 10R that launched with it earlier this year — with a few modifications made to accommodate the mechanism, including a different roller brush and a smaller onboard bin and water tank. For $1,000 less, the 10R is a better bet right now.

The Z70 identified rug tassels as socks, but let go once it realized they were too heavy. I was also able to flag this in the app as something not to pick up.

While cleaning my house, the Saros Z70 used an AI-powered camera on the front of the robot to identify potential pickable objects, then returned to “sort” them. This process, which was very slow, involved scrutinizing the object for a few moments, then shuffling around, pausing to unfold the arm from the body of the robot, extending it, twisting it horizontally or vertically, and using its pincer grip to grab the item.

A camera in the “hand” sees the item and determines how to pick it up, then a grip sensor measures the weight of the object — 300 grams (0.66 pounds) is the max. Sensors along the arm also detect if anything is in the way, to stop it pinching an object or banging into something. At one point, it tried to pick up a rug tassel, realized it was too heavy, and let it go.

When it did manage to pick something up, it’d hoist the object high into the air and triumphantly carry it toward the zone I’d designated in the app. Socks or paper went into a Roborock-provided bin, with about an 80 percent success rate. The robot always dropped stuff, just not always in the bin. Sometimes just alongside it, and once or twice, when it got confused, absolutely nowhere near it.

Footwear was supposed to go to the shoe storage area, but it only managed to pick up one sandal during my testing, studiously avoiding the slippers, flip-flops, and Crocs I left strewn around. Even then, it deposited the sandal just outside the shoe storage zone.

Roborock suggested trying the manual control option in the app, which gives a live view from the camera on the arm to see if the bot could accurately identify and pick up one of the shoes it had been ignoring. This worked on the flip-flop, with the arm picking it up when directed. It just wouldn’t do it autonomously. (Sidenote: The camera in the arm can be used as a roaming home security camera, providing an additional vantage point to the forward-facing one.)

The Z70 did a good job with large socks, small fabric toys that looked like socks, and paper, but it didn’t like small socks. However, in most cleaning runs, it only picked up one or two items, even if there were half a dozen shoes and socks scattered around.

It also can’t pick up items on carpet, so those socks my husband slipped off and hid under the coffee table while watching telly will go untidied. Speaking of tables, the arm can’t reach under low furniture; if it detects anything above it within 45cm (17.7 inches), it won’t deploy its arm.

1/3The Saros Z70 should autonomously pick up footwear such as sandals and slippers, but I had to use the remote control option in the app to get it to pick up my flip-flop.

All of this illustrates the technology’s promise versus its current reality. The robot uses AI to identify obstacles and determine whether to avoid them (like pet poop), clean around them (like cables), or pick them up. The logs in the app revealed that its success was comparable to that of a preschooler using flashcards. On one run, it identified the black flip-flop as a cable, a piece of paper as a plastic bag, and a brown slipper as pet poop. But on the next run, it picked up the same ball of paper with no issues.

The arm is an impressive novelty, but not functional enough to be worth your money

Today, the arm is an impressive novelty, but not functional enough to be worth your money. However, the hardware feels solid, and if the software can be improved, it could be very useful.

I’m constantly picking up and relocating footwear that my family discards, and having a robot do it reliably would make my life easier, not to mention help with the Monday morning panic when we can’t find my daughter’s Crocs. If it could pick up larger items like clothes, deal with phone charging cables, and other common household clutter, I’d love to set it loose on my teenage kids’ rooms to tidy up before cleaning.

1/4One reason the Z70 didn’t try to tidy my shoes is that it thought my slipper was pet poop.

Price: $2,600
Suction: 22,000Pa
Brushes: Single “freeflow” rubber/bristle brush
Mopping: Dual spinning mop pads, auto removal, 22mm mop lift, warm water mopping
Battery capacity: 6,400 mAh, 2.5-hour fast charging
Obstacle detection: Recognizes 108 objects
Navigation: StarSight 2.0 navigation system
Height: 3.14 inches (7.98 cm)
Dock: Auto-empty, dual water tanks, detergent dispenser, hot water washing, hot air drying
Voice control: Built-in Rocky voice assistant
Smart home control: Matter (including Apple Home, Samsung SmartThings), Amazon Alexa, Google Home

Roborock claims to have a slew of updates in the works for the bot, beginning next month, which it says should improve reliability and expand its object repertoire, crucially to heavier items like sneakers. The bot is currently limited to 300 grams (0.66 pounds) but is capable of handling up to 700 grams (1.5 pounds), according to Roborock.

Hopefully, this will make the arm more confident when picking up footwear. Currently, it’s very specific about what it will collect, largely as a safety feature. It did pick up the occasional small cat toy and stuffed animal, but mostly opted against trying to grasp an item if there was any doubt.

Speaking of safety, both Gus and my cat, Boone, tried playing with the arm, and it immediately stopped moving, so I felt confident that they were safe. The arm is also surprisingly sturdy, although I’m not sure it would hold up to 70-pound Gus if he were determined to retrieve a sock. (There is an emergency stop button for the arm should something go wrong.)

Arm issues aside, the Saros Z70 excels as a robot vacuum. Its StarSight 2.0 navigation system (a combination of solid-state lidar, 3D sensors, and cameras) navigated smoothly, dodging obstacles and ably avoiding common robot traps thanks to its ability to lift itself up 10mm and cross thresholds of up to 4cm.

It’s the first robot vacuum I’ve tested that never once got stuck on my rug, under my sofa, or between my lounge chair’s spindly legs. Its 22,000Pa suction power demolished my oatmeal and Cheerio tests, and the dual spinning mop pads efficiently dispatched small spills of milk, juice, and dried ketchup.

1/4The Saros Z70 is an excellent vacuum and mop. At just 3.14 inches high, it can get into places few Roborocks have ventured.

If you love the latest tech and are willing to pay (a lot) for potential, the Saros Z70 is a fascinating peek into the future — not to mention a fun toy (yes, you can remote control the arm). But if you’re happy to pick up your own socks, Roborock’s Saros 10R ($1,599.99) offers all the same floor cleaning abilities, minus the arm, for $1,000 less. (The Z70 was initially priced at $1,899.99, but Roborock recently raised it to $2,599 due to tariffs.)

Are robotic arms the future of home cleaning? Probably. With the speed of innovation in home robotics, a Rosie the Robot-like autonomous cleaning machine in our homes is starting to feel less like science fiction. Roborock may have shipped the first robot with an autonomous arm, but it won’t be the last. For now, the Z70 is an impressive, if flawed, glimpse of what’s to come.

Bringing connected devices into your home also brings with it concerns about how the data they collect is protected. The Verge asks each company whose smart home products we review about safeguards it has in place for your data.

The primary home data a robot vacuum like the Roborock manages are the maps it generates and video and image data from its onboard cameras. Roborock says that all map / cleaning data is encrypted before being sent to the cloud. Additionally, it says data only leaves the device if you view the map on its smartphone app. Otherwise, it stays locally on the device.
The company says a maximum of 20 cleaning maps are stored at any one time, and any maps stored in the cloud are deleted after one year. A factory reset of the robot will remove any locally stored map information.
The remote viewing and obstacle photo features are optional, not enabled by default, must be physically enabled on device, and can be turned off in the app. Remote viewing is live-streaming only (no video is recorded or stored).
When viewing is enabled, the device collects your “user ID, network IP address, and video information captured via the camera,” according to Roborock’s Privacy Policy for Remote Viewing. This is in addition to Roborock’s standard Privacy Policy.
Photos of obstacles are governed by an Obstacle Photo Privacy Policy. Roborock says they are encrypted and stored on the robot vacuum and only sent to the cloud if you click on an icon on the map to view the image on your phone. Then it’s secured with Transport Layer Security. It will be deleted from the server within three working days and from your phone when you exit the app.
The robotic arm requires a camera to function. It is disabled by default and must be manually activated by the user. Once activated, it can be deactivated in the app.

Photos and video by Jennifer Pattison Tuohy / The Verge

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May 20, 2025 0 comments

Game Reviews

Deliver At All Costs review

by admin May 20, 2025

Deliver At All Costs review

Excellent dumb fun and constantly creative mission design, hobbled by tedious interludes and an insistent, unconvincing, and unnecessary story.

Developer: Studio Far Out Games
Publisher: Konami
Release: May 22nd, 2025
On: Windows
From: Steam/GOG/Epic Games
Price: £25/€30/$30
Reviewed on: Intel Core i5-12600K, 32GB RAM, Nvidia RTX 4060 Ti, Windows 11

They say that if you ignore your detractors, you also have to ignore the praise. But I’m proud that my boss told me I’m a good courier. “I am a good courier”, I think, ramming a remote control corvette destined for a local child’s chimney into a pedestrian’s shins, knocking them skyward, zipping away before the sound of soft bones on hard concrete catches up with me. “The best courier,” I nod, reversing my truck into a beach-front bar on the way to fumigate a truckful of rotting melons. “The best damn courier in town!”, I exclaim, honking my newly-installed cursehorn, shattering nearby windows and streetlights into glinting injury confetti.

Sometimes, confidence is more valuable than a measured perspective on things, and if you need to focus on the praise to block out the little voice telling you the way you’re driving to these sun-kissed surf guitars is less Dennis Wilson, more Charlie Manson, so be it. Deliver At All Costs has me thinking a lot about confidence, in fact. It invokes GTA with a linked series of open maps, constantly devil-whispering your attention away from main and side missions with the promise of the hallowed fuckaboutsesh – smashable suburbia detailed down to the individual fence picket taking the place of rocket launchers and car pile-ups. But tragically, it’s also cursed with a lack of confidence that this is enough. It wants to be something more.

With games, I’ve come to view silliness – joyful, knowing, celebratory, confident silliness – as a kind of fearlessness. There was a much-mocked Tweet by an apparently well-known industry human a few years back along the lines of “in a world where every game is John Wick, The Last Of Us 2 is Schindler’s list”. Allusion aside, I remember thinking that my problem was that not enough games are John Wick. We should be so lucky to have more games exhibit that level of technical virtuosity and playfulness and inventiveness and character while also displaying such prescient levels of self-awareness and comfort regarding their own limits. Excellent, dumb fun with nothing to prove is in shorter supply than you might think.

Image credit: Rock Paper Shotgun/Studio Far Out

To wit: Deliver At All Costs is about 70% videogame-ass videogame, and a pretty great one at that. The rest is dull cutscenes and conversations and other assorted faff, starring a deeply unlikable protagonist, standoffish enough to be instantly repellant while also being the sort of bozo who says shit like “well, here goes nothing!” out loud to himself before walking into a job interview. It’s been ages since I’ve played a freeform chaos ’em up (Destroy All Humans! springs to mind, in spirit if not specifics), and the result was like going for lunch with a friend I hadn’t seen for years, only for them to grab the delicious milkshake out of my hands every ten minutes and refuse to give it back until I’d listened to the next part of their screenplay. It’s not a good screenplay, Eric. And give me back my milkshake.

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I wouldn’t even say that the game’s writing is bad, in the sense that it does contain very good things resulting from humans putting imaginative ideas on paper. The formula stays consistent. Either get a thing and take it to a place, sometimes with a few stops across the way, without it getting ruined. Or, collect or deliver lots of things quickly, sometimes with a time limit, sometimes while being attacked by cops or other vermin. You’ll get a few cargo-loading tools to upgrade your truck as your progress – a winch, a crane. But the game is so creative with its twists and framing that each delivery stands out.

One mission, you’re delivering a stone statue of the mayor to replace an old one that’s been painted white over the years by a truly biblical quantity of bird plop. As you’re making your way back down treacherous volcano slopes, you’re set upon by a swarming armada of dysentery pigeons, forced to swerve incoming shit sheets to deliver your cargo as pristine as possible. Another, you’re delivering a gigantic marlin, driving through barrels of feed en route so it doesn’t get hangry and attempt to flip over your car with its tail. Next, you might be ramming into rival courier trucks and crane-stealing their packages to make the deliveries yourself.

Image credit: Rock Paper Shotgun/Studio Far Out

This is all made goofier by what Brendy described as “slip-slidey Micro Machines goodness”. While I’d imagine trying to drive such a pressure-sensitive vehicle with a mouse and keyboard is a nightmare, on controller your truck is tight and responsive while also reacting to the slightest bit of overzealousness on your part with clownish histrionics. This is fine and good and welcome. The worse you drive, the more fun it is, and after playing two parryful games in a row that ceaselessly screamed at me like J. K. Simmons in Whiplash to get it right, it feels great to play something this joyously permissiveness of sloppy, slippy smashbastardry.

So, what’d be the perfect chaser to all this creative mayhem? Why, some sort of traumatic backstory for your courier, naturally. Comic strips where an overbearing father unsupportive of your engineer-tagonist’s love for “those damn gizmos” wants him to go shoot a fox instead. But he can’t do it! He can’t pull the trigger! I ran over twelve people yesterday, game. I made at least twice that many people homeless. There’s a rivalry with upper management trying to uncover your courier’s not-actually-that-dark past. You have to go to bed and wake up and get dressed every few missions in your apartment, despite there being no other life sim elements that would give this stuff purpose. There’s a sequence at the end of the first act where you have to push crates and filing cabinets from doorways to escape a burning building. It’s unconvincing, uninteresting, unfocused, and there’s far too much of it.

Image credit: Rock Paper Shotgun/Studio Far Out

Thing is though, the city is already a nice enough place to spend time, vibes-wise; a toytown pastiche of mid-century Americana that creates a familiar and vibrant enough sense of place for you to enjoy levelling that place to bits. There’s enough here to convey the game’s identity without all the faff. And this is where I return to thinking about confidence. More specifically, how Deliver At All Costs has a lack of trust in itself. The game seems afraid to let itself be defined by its strongest elements, and attempts a type of storytelling structure that serves it not at all.

Because this doesn’t strike me as a story someone especially wanted to tell, nor the additional sequences ones anyone especially wanted to make. They are inclusions born of a nervous yearning to fulfill the mold of an impersonal idea of what constitutes a real videogame, a ladder to worthiness built from checkboxes. Worse, they drag the party down and refuse to give me back my damn milkshake. If you reckon you’ve got a higher tolerance for battering the ‘skip dialogue’ button though, by all means go for it. There is, as I say, some excellent, dumb fun to be had here.

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May 20, 2025 0 comments

Game Updates

Only press who previewed the RTX 5060 under Nvidia’s test conditions are getting review drivers, reports claim

by admin May 20, 2025

In classic me fashion, I swanned off for a few days just as another graphics card fracas has spilled out into public view. At the centre this time is the previously unassuming RTX 5060, which you may have noticed is due for launch today yet only has a handful of “hands-on previews” to tell you how big of a graphics it does. Allegedly, that’s because Nvidia have been keeping hold of the drivers needed for full reviews, only providing them at the eleventh hour to press outlets that have previously run these previews. No preview? No review, at least until the drivers release publicly later today, and what’s more, the same reports say that these previews were only offered under strict testing provisos set by Nvidia themselves.

According to VideoCardz and Hardware Unboxed, the mandated test conditions supposedly range from only allowing certain games for benchmarking – judging from the previews currently online, these were Doom: The Dark Ages, Avowed, Cyberpunk 2077, Hogwarts Legacy and Marvel Rivals – to the more egregious demand that RTX 5060 performance figures would focus on DLSS 4’s Multi Frame Generation (MFG). And, in turn, would only be compared to results from older XX60 GPUs that lack DLSS frame gen support entirely.

“We worked with a few chosen media on previews with a pre-release driver,” an Nvidia spokesperson told me this afternoon. No comment on the review driver situation, other than a 5pm BST release time, was given.

Image credit: Rock Paper Shotgun

RPS was not invited to take part in these previews, and I can’t imagine agreeing to such terms if we were. Although it doesn’t appear that Nvidia required previewers to give positive RTX 5060 takes, with several highlighting the shortcomings of its 8GB VRAM limit, the limited game selection and emphasis on frame-genned performance versus the much older RTX 3060 and RTX 2060 Super are clearly intended to push a particular narrative: one that at best downplays the drawbacks of frame generation and at worst misleads readers with an unhelpfully narrow view of relative performance. GameStar, a German site that took Nvidia up on the offer, said in their preview that the GPU giant even specified the in-game settings that each game should be tested with.

The sense that a big, green thumb is pressing down on the critical scales is deepened by the alleged trading of earlier review drivers for a compliant preview. Even if, by that point, reviewers are free to use their own, independently-set benchmarks, the initial wave of RTX 5060 reviews will come from publications that Nvidia has – accurately or otherwise – deemed more friendly than others. Those who refused the locked-down previews, and have thus demonstrated less of a willingness to go along with the desired messaging, will be forced to wait before sharing impressions.

I can’t claim absolute moral superiority here because again, I wasn’t invited, and thus didn’t have the chance to send a “Thanks but no thanks” email (even I hadn’t simultaneously been too busy recovering from gin-assisted groomsman duty). Still, yeah, not a fan.

I have recently noticed Nvidia PRs becoming unusually pushy about how great it would be to test such and such frame generation in such and such game, but functionally those have only ever been suggestions, and I’ve never faced even a veiled hint at retribution for ignoring them in my reviews. Nonetheless, I now find myself in the bizarre position of having had physical possession of an RTX 5060 for nearly a week (posted by Zotac, with no strings attached other than to please not lose or break it), yet don’t have the software means to test or appraise it on the day of release. Like, man, at least Bethesda didn’t send us copies of Starfield while they were withholding the activation keys.

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More disturbing still is that this isn’t even the only accusation of editorial manhandling to be laid at Nvidia’s feet today. Big-deal tech YooToobers Gamers Nexus claimed in a video (above) that Nvidia have, with varying levels of subtlety, threatened to cut off their interview access to Nvidia engineering staff in response to a perceived lack of focus on DLSS and MFG performance testing in their reviews. Gamers Nexus have, in fact, produced multiple long-form vids on these topics specifically.

It isn’t unheard of for, nor technically outside the rights of, companies to pick and choose who gets primo access for coverage. In tech media especially, there may even be a minor, ethically unbothersome quid-pro-quo involved: attending a virtual briefing, for instance, in exchange for getting onto the review list. But there’s a honking great difference between asking journalists to sit through a thirty-minute slideshow and, essentially, demanding editorial jurisdiction over how their products are evaluated. Nvidia, one of the richest, most powerful firms on Earth, should know better – and should have at least had an idea that being caught fiddling with the independent review process might cause more damage to the RTX 5060 than a few variations of “It’s not much faster than the 4060, is it?”

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May 20, 2025 0 comments

Product Reviews

Acer Vero B247Y business monitor review

by admin May 20, 2025

Why you can trust TechRadar

We spend hours testing every product or service we review, so you can be sure you’re buying the best. Find out more about how we test.

All around, the monitor world has continued to flourish. People want better displays to work on, create on, game on, and consume on, and the prices continue to rise. So, it’s worth noting when I find a budget monitor that I don’t hate. Not everyone, in fact, very few, needs the biggest and best display.

Even with what I do, I barely need a high-resolution display. I could get most of what I do done on a 1080p screen if needed, or if the budget required it. There are quite a few drawbacks for choosing this kind of display, like screen quality in both picture and frame, the speakers sound like someone whispering into a soup can, but at the same time, if it gets the job done, and saves me a ton of money, why wouldn’t I consider it?

And with that in mind, it’s not hard to recommend the Acer Vero B247Y as one of the best business monitors for anyone looking for a budget display.

Acer Vero B247Y: Unboxing & first impressions

I’m not going to lie, I didn’t expect much when I started unboxing the simple cardboard box that held the Acer B247Y monitor.

But once I opened it up, I noticed it had a DisplayPort cable, an HDMI cable, a power cable, a stand, and some nice documentation. I could put it all together before I realized what I was doing, and I was using it after mere moments of unboxing.

The monitor is incredibly light, so light that it doesn’t make sense. Once I got this display on my desk, I pretty quickly threw it on a VESA mount monitor arm to get it positioned right where I wanted it, then I got to work using the display.

While it may feel like the exact monitor (probably not), my mom grew up on a corner desk littered with receipts connected via VGA to a tower pc that weighed more than I did, but it’s not half bad when you consider the price.

(Image credit: Collin Probst // Future)

Acer Vero B247Y: Design & Build Quality

Specs

Display: 23.8″ IPS
Resolution: 1920×1080
Refresh Rate: 120Hz (HDMI + DP)
Brightness: 250 nits
Inputs: HDMI 1.4, DisplayPort 1.2, VGA, Audio In/Out, Headphone jack
Speakers: 2x 2W (bless them for trying)
Adjustments: Height, tilt, swivel, pivot
Weight: 12.06 lbs with stand

The display build quality is mediocre despite the realization that this monitor can be found for under $100. It’s super lightweight, which is great for moving it around, but it does not feel premium.

In fact, it feels like if I sneeze or cough too aggressively, it might fall down, which is why I added it to my monitor arm. The black plastic frame looks cheap, but it hides the cheap factor quite nicely since it’s matted black.

The port layout is simple and easy to use. No frills, no add-ons, just video in. Sometimes, that’s all you want, and with this guy, that’s all you get.

(Image credit: Collin Probst // Future)

Acer Vero B247Y: In use

Jokes aside, this monitor is good enough to get some business work done. I of course wouldn’t use it for graphic design or much creative work, if any, but for Slack, documents, email, browsing the internet, Excel sheets, and so on, this display gets the job done for cheap. Especially if this monitor is not frequently used, sits in a high-traffic office area where it could get damaged, or if you are simply just working on basic tasks and don’t require 4K at all.

Plus, since it’s so cheap, you can spend that money on accessories, a better computer, or just simply save it for something else.

Moving on, I wouldn’t recommend using this display for playing any audio of any kind. It’s actually comical to me that they even tried adding speakers to this, coming in with a whopping two 2W speakers. I tried taking a video call through this and the speaking voices were terrible, music is worse, and I didn’t dare try any sort of mixing audio levels for a video or project through this.

If you’re looking for a simple monitor to get business work done that won’t break the bank, then this is a monitor you should consider. It’s a good budget option. But, if you’re going to expect it to be great for gaming, consuming high-resolution content, color grading, or anything like that, I would look elsewhere.

(Image credit: Collin Probst // Future)Swipe to scroll horizontally

Attributes

Notes

Rating

Design

Cheap and simple

⭐⭐⭐

Ease of use

Easy to use

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Practicality

Right for a budget

⭐⭐⭐⭐

Price

Very cheap

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Acer Vero B247Y: Final verdict

If you find yourself looking for “any monitor” within a budget, you should check out the B247Y as your budget solution.

It’s great for budget setups, secondary setups, your old tower pc that just needs a display, a server display, replacing the monitor you just broke and don’t want to pay for a replacement for, or for displays you are worried are going to quickly break for one reason or another.

Bump up the resolution with our round-up of the best 5K and 8K monitors for professional use.

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May 20, 2025 0 comments

Game Reviews

RoadCraft review: Streamlined building biz beset by bumbling AI Bobs

by admin May 19, 2025

It’s getting close to 10PM on a Friday night.

There’s a slightly muddy hill. Halfway up it, their tires spinning helplessly, are two trucks carrying goods they need to deliver to a shed about half the map away. I sigh, and give my bulldozer/cargo truck the beans. As one fourteen-wheeled mass, we begin to crawl up the gentle slope, which would be easy pickings if the AI-manned haulers glued to my front scoop had any off-roading capabilities whatsoever.

They don’t. There’s no driving skill to make up for it, either. If they run into an obstacle during the course of the route I’ve plotted out for them which can’t be overcome by simply reversing and pulling forwards less than three times, they just give up. Small rocks terrify them, turns that happen to be in any way sharp are the banes of their existence, and sometimes they seem to roll over just for a laugh. They need me. When I’m not Bob the builder, I’m Bob the babysitter.

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What I’ve just described is one of the main things that sets RoadCraft – the latest entry in Saber Interactive’s Spintires series of off-roading sims – from its rugged, outdoorsy siblings. These games, MudRunner, SnowRunner, and last year’s Expeditions, were generally games about you – the player – getting from A to B through untamed environments and getting stuck when you messed it up.

I’ve regularly, and slightly sarkily, compared these games to the driving equivalent of FromSoft’s boss battlers. Notoriously unforgiving adventures about eventual success earned through overwhelming skill or luck, and usually preempted by a crap-tonne of failure that gradually pushes those who haven’t already taken their lumps in the direction of doing the right thing.

When you’re behind the wheel, RoadCraft’s by far the least hardcore title in its delivery of that gameplay loop that Saber has put out to this point. Don’t get me wrong, there’s still a learning curve and plenty of ways to mess up that’ll require a reset. However, in its creation of a game that’s more focused on construction, maintenance, and logistics management than it is straight-up haulage or frontier-conquering exploration, the studio’s simplified things.

As you carry out jobs, you no longer have to keep a watchful eye on your fuel gauge or do any repairs if you slam into a wall. RoadCraft’s fleet is permanently fully-fueled and indestructible unless you roll over, sink, or otherwise get wedged in a spot you can’t extricate yourself from. While this, and the resulting lack of an in-depth upgrade system for vehicles, might be a bit frustrating to hardcore haulers, you can see why Saber’s opted to do it.

See? Told you there are still ways you can monumentally mess things up. | Image credit: VG247/Saber

The rides you’re handed the keys to this time are generally a lot more specialised towards very specific roles for the jobs you’ll be doing as the game walks you through getting locations which have suffered different kinds of natural disaster – from floods, to earthquakes, to hurricanes – up and running again.

You’re running a construction firm that you start off by naming and picking out a livery/logo combo for. When you first deploy into one of the maps, which thankfully are openly free-roamable outside jobs unlike those in Expeditions, you’ll do the usual thing and head out in a nippy scout 4×4 to recon the environment.

Then, your re-construction efforts begin, and can be divided into about five or six different general activities you’ll do in various orders and with different quirks as you progress – scouting, logging, road and bridge building, plotting routes for AI supply runs, debris clearing, and resource delivery.

In terms of the latter, there are four types of resources you’ll need to fix various things – logs, steel beams, metal pipes, and concrete slabs – all of which you’ll acquire by either recycling debris at the plants on each map that part of your job is to get up and running. Getting ahold of those, ferrying them where they need to go, and installing them is done in very SnowRunnery fashion, albeit with manual loading being your only option.

As such, the vehicle I’ve spent by far the most time in during my time with the game so far is the Mule T1 crane cargo truck. As the name suggests, it’s a lorry with very decent off-roading capabilities that’s built to transport goods, and even boasts its own built-in crane.

(Slaps roof) You know how much junk this Mule can haul? | Image credit: VG247-Saber

If you’re playing solo, it’s by far the most important purchase you’ll make early on, because its good stats and that crane mean it’s ideal to handle the vast majority of haulage jobs the game gives you. There is a point where some loads start to get a bit too heavy for it to deal with easily, but I’ve made it up to level 12 so far and it’s still the heart of my fleet. That arguably exposes a bit of a flaw in RoadCraft’s launch vehicle offerings – there’s only one or very occasionally two better successors you can unlock for each of the different vehicle types as you progress.

You do unlock some new types of vehicle around the midpoint, such as a heavy crane and beefier cargo truck that together can handle the heavier loads the Mule struggles with, but in plenty of cases there’s a beginner rusty variant of a specific vehicle, a refurbished version of the exact same model with slightly better stats, and then an advanced variant you’ll unlock once you’re starting to home in on the endgame.

The most egregious example of this is with the field service vehicles. There are two. One you’re given for free at the start of the game and can’t even be repainted in your company livery as far as I can tell, and then its endgame replacement, which you won’t unlock until level 20, which based on my progress so far looks like it’ll be when you’ve basically finished all of the game’s current content.

You’re still unlocking one or two new vehicles or variants of existing vehicles with each level you gain to help freshen things up a bit, but the relatively thin depth at each position and lack of part customisation means the sense of progression feels a lot more limited. No doubt there’ll be plenty of DLC to beef up the roster, but Focus seems to be leaning a bit too heavily on that.

C. W. McCall intensifies. | Image credit: VG247/Saber

Combined with the aforementioned stripping out of stuff like fuel management, and the XP/cash rewards for jobs being quite generous (the latter especially so because you aren’t constantly spending on upgrades), to this point RoadCraft is the entry in the uber-hard Spintires series I’ve made my way through with the least struggle. The one exception to that, as I outlined in the intro, is that damn route plotting for AI trucks. If it’s the part of the game that’s supposed to dial the difficulty back up, it certainly does just that at regular points, often in infuriating fashion.

If I’ve gotten stuck while driving, usually because I’ve done something stupid, that’s annoying, but at the end of the day it’s on me to do a better job. If an AI lorry I’ve already built a bunch of bridges and roads for requires me to follow it along its entire route and do some push-based babysitting whenever it encounters the tiniest obstacle because it’s using a truck that only works on perfectly straight asphalt highways, that’s less easy to take on the chin. Kudos to Saber for trying something different, but some of the ways I’ve had to resort to helping its lorry Lemmings feel like they pretty much defeat the point of not having me just make the deliveries myself.

While folks who take a bit more time to clear the perfect path might well find RoadCraft lacking a bit of challenge, I’ve personally enjoyed the non-AI lorry bits of it generally being a lot more chill than the usual. The game’s at its best when you’re heading to a base or driving your field service vehicle somewhere and setting up to spend some time doing a specific job. Both act as spawn points for vehicles, though the latter requires fuel tokens that’re pretty easy to earn from side jobs. Once you’re there, you’ll be doing something like watching the four stages of RoadCraft’s namesake party trick, building roads by dumping sand with a dump truck, using a dozer to flatten it, wheeling out your paver to coat it an asphalt, and then hopping in a steamroller to make it nice and smooth.

It’s as mega-satisfying as you always dream baking a cake will be, even if the first step can be pretty unforgiving because it’s near impossible to drop sand in a nice uniform fashion. Luckily, you’ve got the choice to do each step manually or let the computer do it automatically, with the latter tending to go ok given you’re only making short stretches of road. Well, unless your paver finds a small rock you haven’t cleared.

It’s a piece of cake to lay a pretty road. If the way is hazy, you gotta do the laying by the codex. | Image credit: VG247/Saber

Logging by chopping down trees with a tree harvester, picking up the big twigs with a log hauler, and then cleaning up your mess with a stump mulcher is just as fun. There’s not as much process to laying electrical wires between different spots on the map to power up substations, but finding a way to guide the comically unwieldy cable layer through the backwoods has its good moments, even if it’s possible to get stuck in weird ways.

Overall, RoadCraft offers a unique enough twist on the established Spintires formula, if a streamlined one, to be worth giving a go. Some series veterans will end up longing for the elements it’s stripped out, especially when the new stuff that’s been drafted in is being more frustrating than fun. But, that central loop of frustration giving way to jubilation as you overcome the environment is still there and regularly just as satisfying.

Especially when the convoy you’ve spent all evening pushing up hills finally reaches its destination.

RoadCraft releases on March 20 for PC, Xbox Series X/S, and PS5. This review was conducted on PS5 using a code provided by the publisher.

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May 19, 2025 0 comments