After many hour spent travelling the motorways and autobahns in Europe, I was ready to once again start my own trucking empire across the pond. I was ready to cruise around California in my big rig, occasionally crossing into Nevada, to deliver my cargo on time.
The basic formula of the game has remained pretty constant, spend a few hours driving other peoples trucks until you can afford your own. Then you spread your trucking empire across the two available states. While there’s only two to start with, there will be more because SCS are excellent at pumping out more content and support for years to come.
With the possibilities that America has to offer, it could be a bright and varied future of content. Hopefully with more trucks, because the options are limited from the initial release.
What’s New?
There are a couple of new features in the game, namely the policy cars that lurk around trying to catch you speeding. I was caught out a few times, once by car following me and once by one which was parked by the side of the road. This is something that I thought would be cool in this kind of game, and it really does make you pay more attention to your speed. As unlike ETS2 where there are speed cameras, which don’t move.
How does it play?
It’s very familiar territory for anyone who’s played ETS2, as the slow paced gameplay is overly addicting and hard to explain.
There are two main ways to play this game, you can either work hard making other peoples deliveries only paying your fines, and graft until you can afford your own truck. Or you can shortcut it and take out a loan to buy your first truck. I was determined not to take a loan for the first time, and am currently still working up to my first truck.
You will get the chance to hire drivers, with their own skills … but you’ll have to buy them a truck of their own, and they’ll just chill out making deliveries and money for you.
But the immersion is there, especially coupled with a steering wheel and some appropriate music and the road, time and deliveries fade fast.
What could make it better?
A multiplayer mode, would be a welcome addition. As the ETS2 mod was excellent fun, convoys with your friends on VOIP would be an excellent way to spend an evening or maybe even a full weekend.
More trucks, and more states would be the ideal things to release over the coming months, as a varied scenery would further the experience for me, and the few people I’ve spoken to about the game.
There is a downside, I felt the map is too small as I always imagined travelling between LA and Las Vegas would take me longer in game than around 45 minutes. I do feel like the ETS2 map was bigger then the couple of states that been released so far, but as this is my only gripe with the game so far, I can’t complain much.
My highlight of the game was driving past Primm, a place I only know from New Vegas, and it looked distinctly less apocalysey then last time I passed through.
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