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"[GAME] Euro Truck Simulator 2"

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Sat 27/12/14 at 18:59
Regular
"How Ironic"
Posts: 4,312
In the past, you wouldn't have been criticised for immediately thinking of Microsoft Flight Simulator as the driving (or flying?) force behind the simulation genre. Simulation games are often tiresome enough for the average gamer, because so much detail goes into them to try and make it as realistic and usually as difficult as possible. For the enthusiast however, they're a blessing.

They're a chance to pilot a 747 to Prague, while still being able to reach a beer at any time and not worrying about crashing the plane before you even leave the ground. Present day, the genre has now taken some of the most mundane jobs and hobbies and made them available to all in the comfort of their homes. Who wouldn't want to clean coke cans and monster munch bags from the pavements in their free time?

Euro Truck Simulator 2 is a game you would probably throw into the same bin as Street Cleaning Simulator. I would hate to have to pitch these ideas to the people with the money, because it's difficult to make any concepts like this sound interesting.

"You drive around Europe in a truck and deliver things. If you get enough money, you can buy more trucks to deliver more things. The end game is driving as many trucks to deliver as many things as possible."

This is the point at which the dragons would say "I'm out". But hold your steering wheels, that's not just it for this game.

Now I bought this game from Steam during the sales, after looking for a highly rated game under £4. I had to read a few reviews because quite frankly, I couldn't understand why a truck simulator was ranked 4th in user reviews for cheap games. Then I started playing. A lot.

The game is what you expect in terms of concept. You start as a lowly truck driver with little money with the dream of owning your own haulage company. Starting out essentially as a free agent, you begin to deliver goods all over your beginning country, which could be anywhere you choose in Europe. Taking around 15 minutes to complete, with bonuses for avoiding traffic and following the highway code, the beginning deliveries aren't too tiresome.

After building up money, and starting my own company, I began to buy garages, hire employees and buy my own trucks. It's exciting at first for some strange reason to feel as though you're making progress in this haulage world. My company, Wolverine Haulage, was beginning to grow. My trucks would be all over the place with drivers whom I had picked. The deliveries were starting to let me travel across to mainland Europe, and I had to get used to driving on the right side of the road.

This is when I began to lose interest, and for good reasons. The deliveries started taking around 40 minutes to complete, which for an enthusiast probably isn't long enough, but for a gamer, is way too much time to invest on a single unrewarding goal. The flaws in the AI began to show over these long trips, with vehicles coming through red lights and changing lanes while I was passing while I was the one who suffered the consequences by losing money. You can't even speed the trips up by driving fast, because firstly, your truck is lucky to get above 50mph, and secondly, you'll be fined time and time again for ignoring speed cameras.

I was just beginning to enjoy building up a company, but ultimately, the game never goes far beyond what you expect. And rightly so, because it's a truck simulator. There isn't much else for it to venture into. You drive around while the monotony of the real world is still there. You're spending your free time on something somebody does as a job with all the simulated stresses in there, without the real rewards.

There is actually DLC for this game, which ordinarily would expand the game beyond what it is. In this case, it doesn't. Going East, the expansion for this game, does little else but offer more places in the world for you to get fed up. Like the base game, it offers various locations, and in major cities, you might find the odd landmark in the background to try and make you feel at home. A nice touch across the board, but not enough to salvage the scrap that the game is at it's roots. You're still driving at 50mp/h for a real-time hour.

If you buy this game, you might be surprised at first that it is a little deeper than what you expect. Refilling petrol, tuning into real radio stations and being fined for having your lights off at night might seem novel at first. But before long the reality strikes that you're spending your free time driving down a virtual motorway for hours on end, and that's all you'll ever be doing until you decide enough is enough. Let me deliver this verdict; it just doesn't have any mileage.
There have been no replies to this thread yet.
Sat 27/12/14 at 18:59
Regular
"How Ironic"
Posts: 4,312
In the past, you wouldn't have been criticised for immediately thinking of Microsoft Flight Simulator as the driving (or flying?) force behind the simulation genre. Simulation games are often tiresome enough for the average gamer, because so much detail goes into them to try and make it as realistic and usually as difficult as possible. For the enthusiast however, they're a blessing.

They're a chance to pilot a 747 to Prague, while still being able to reach a beer at any time and not worrying about crashing the plane before you even leave the ground. Present day, the genre has now taken some of the most mundane jobs and hobbies and made them available to all in the comfort of their homes. Who wouldn't want to clean coke cans and monster munch bags from the pavements in their free time?

Euro Truck Simulator 2 is a game you would probably throw into the same bin as Street Cleaning Simulator. I would hate to have to pitch these ideas to the people with the money, because it's difficult to make any concepts like this sound interesting.

"You drive around Europe in a truck and deliver things. If you get enough money, you can buy more trucks to deliver more things. The end game is driving as many trucks to deliver as many things as possible."

This is the point at which the dragons would say "I'm out". But hold your steering wheels, that's not just it for this game.

Now I bought this game from Steam during the sales, after looking for a highly rated game under £4. I had to read a few reviews because quite frankly, I couldn't understand why a truck simulator was ranked 4th in user reviews for cheap games. Then I started playing. A lot.

The game is what you expect in terms of concept. You start as a lowly truck driver with little money with the dream of owning your own haulage company. Starting out essentially as a free agent, you begin to deliver goods all over your beginning country, which could be anywhere you choose in Europe. Taking around 15 minutes to complete, with bonuses for avoiding traffic and following the highway code, the beginning deliveries aren't too tiresome.

After building up money, and starting my own company, I began to buy garages, hire employees and buy my own trucks. It's exciting at first for some strange reason to feel as though you're making progress in this haulage world. My company, Wolverine Haulage, was beginning to grow. My trucks would be all over the place with drivers whom I had picked. The deliveries were starting to let me travel across to mainland Europe, and I had to get used to driving on the right side of the road.

This is when I began to lose interest, and for good reasons. The deliveries started taking around 40 minutes to complete, which for an enthusiast probably isn't long enough, but for a gamer, is way too much time to invest on a single unrewarding goal. The flaws in the AI began to show over these long trips, with vehicles coming through red lights and changing lanes while I was passing while I was the one who suffered the consequences by losing money. You can't even speed the trips up by driving fast, because firstly, your truck is lucky to get above 50mph, and secondly, you'll be fined time and time again for ignoring speed cameras.

I was just beginning to enjoy building up a company, but ultimately, the game never goes far beyond what you expect. And rightly so, because it's a truck simulator. There isn't much else for it to venture into. You drive around while the monotony of the real world is still there. You're spending your free time on something somebody does as a job with all the simulated stresses in there, without the real rewards.

There is actually DLC for this game, which ordinarily would expand the game beyond what it is. In this case, it doesn't. Going East, the expansion for this game, does little else but offer more places in the world for you to get fed up. Like the base game, it offers various locations, and in major cities, you might find the odd landmark in the background to try and make you feel at home. A nice touch across the board, but not enough to salvage the scrap that the game is at it's roots. You're still driving at 50mp/h for a real-time hour.

If you buy this game, you might be surprised at first that it is a little deeper than what you expect. Refilling petrol, tuning into real radio stations and being fined for having your lights off at night might seem novel at first. But before long the reality strikes that you're spending your free time driving down a virtual motorway for hours on end, and that's all you'll ever be doing until you decide enough is enough. Let me deliver this verdict; it just doesn't have any mileage.

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