Euro Truck Simulator 2 (2012)

I've had a long venture with Euro Truck Simulator 2 in the recent years. This is quite much the simulator game done right and by far one of the best. With a team faithfully adding landmarks, vast landscapes and implementing authentic vehicles by looks and sounds to this day, it seems it's got a promising, long journey past this day (what with additional DLC's being released). The cherry on top of the cake would be the fan base along with another team that added the multiplayer mod, which makes trucking less lonelier and constantly hosting events such as convoys. People who are looking for a game to relax with while trucking through Europe should give this a shot. The MP mod adds to the gameplay value, I'd say!

I don't quite know why this wasn't just a piece of Hungle Bungle fodder that I left running in the background for Steam cards, but for some odd reason, I spent a good portion of this weekend hauling tonnage from Frankfurt Am Main to Rostock in Euro Truck Simulator 2. The experience was... mixed. My first attempt was a rocky one. After setting up my company and picking the driver that most looked like a tiny pope, I started up the tutorial and learned my way around the inside of a big rig. So far, so good, but moments into my first actual job the truck got caught on seemingly nothing and glitched out spectacularly, forcing me to cut power to the computer to get the damn game to go away.

Hesitantly, I ran it again, and thankfully it worked much better this time around. Using my trusty GPS and occasionally checking the Options screen for controls (How do I headlights? How do I windshield? What the hell's an Ausfhart?), I was burnin' litres of petrol, cruising past countryside, intimidating other drivers with my apocalyptic girth, and agonizingly crawling up steep on- and off-ramps, oblivious to the honks and screams of the jerks in cars around me. The discovery of the radio was delightful; the game offers a default selection of live European stations to run through, all completely indecipherable, all pretty fascinating, and all of which drop F-bombs with cheery regularity. If that's not your style, you can import whatever audio tracks you want and just shuffle through those (because all truckers love haulin' ass to One-Winged Angel and Dancing Mad Tier). Admittedly, all I was doing was driving at moderate speed down some fairly low-res highways, but there's something meditative about the experience. The road called, and I answered.

Over time though, things soured. I decided I was done being a mere professional trucker, employed by others and making a fraction of what I could working on my own. I discovered several recruiting agencies and truck dealerships, so technically, becoming my own boss was now an option. Then I saw the price tags. Getting my own truck, even the worst of the worst, would run me upwards of $100k. As I was making a mere $2-3k per job (assuming no Headlight Violations or Vehicular Collisions take a chunk out of the profits), and each job takes a good chunk of real-world time to complete, I could see I'd be grinding for a while. And then another glitch hit, this time simply freezing the game for a good thirty seconds, then unleashing everything I missed out on all at once as the game caught up with itself. So many car crashes. So much fines. I'd managed to completely undo all my hard work up to that point in a single, underwhelming 40 car pile-up.

On top of that, the game had some other less than stellar traits. Rather than being a faithful recreation of the European highway system, everything is shrunken down to scale. You clear kilometers in seconds, and even the biggest cities seem to be composed of a couple industrial sites, a gas station, a hotel, and maybe a dozen odd generic structures here and there. The pastoral scenery fares no better; I'd say it's maybe a touch better than PS2 quality, but that's pretty jarring for a 2012 game, especially when scenery is such a critical part of the game. I was briefly okay with the attention to detail paid to the truck interiors, but there are no personal touches added, no fuzzy dice, no dancing Hawaiian girl, no litter on the floor, no beaded seat cover. A little flair could have gone a long way here. Finally, (and this may be an understandable limitation to keep the game from becoming a demolition derby) all car crashes do is jostle the screen a bit and dock your pay. No matter how much more massive you are than your prey, all you manage to do is bump them, and off they go on their merry way. I'm not out for blood here, but I'd like the repercussions to be a little more significant than that.

There's definitely an audience for this game. I myself came close to finding it worth the time - perhaps not as a source of fun, but as an interesting and relaxing title to come back to now and again. Unfortunately, the bugs and the budget both hamstring it more than I'd like. If you're deadset on buying it, go ahead, and you'll likely enjoy the experience. For everyone else, wait for a bargain or keep your expectations in check; it's a hell of a bumpy road out there.

Personally, I'm living my child's dream - riding a truck. Just chillin' on the highway, listening to my own imported music, and ride. Graphic is decent and environment fits (to some level) with the real traffic routes and cities. You start as an employee in random truck companies, later you will earn own garage, possibility to buy truck, more trucks, take longer journeys with more fragile/dangerous/valuable cargo. If you like simulators, get this one.