The roads are filled with more traffic than prior games, and it's dictated by convincing AI fellow road-users are beholden to the same everyday rule-set as you, stopping at traffic lights and observing a speed limit that fluctuates as you cross state-lines and keeping an eye out for patrolling police cars that enforce the laws of the road. It's a subtle spell that American Truck Simulator casts, yet one whose alchemy can be surprisingly complex. Who are these people? And why are they all so awesome? Perhaps my favourite feature of American Truck Simulator is the selection of mugshots you get to choose for your profile. I find myself playing American Truck Simulator with a full wheel set-up - other control methods are supported, from controller to keyboard, and they all acquit themselves equally well - not simply to engage with the mild simulation SCS Software has crafted but to have somewhere to rest my arms while I sit back and enjoy whatever strange new radio station I've picked up, and settle into the lullaby of this gentlest of games. Drive blinking dryly through the night on an interstate, drinking in the neon light signs of the small town you pass through in the 3am still before heading back out into the darkness again. Dial into the local country radio via the in-game tuner and enjoy the journey from Reno to Elko, watching the big sky slowly bruise with another perfect sunset as the scenery shifts and you tick off another job. In American Truck Simulator, driving is a sedate treat, a digital barbiturate that calms with its simple, soothing pleasures. (I took my own a couple of years back, snaking from Chicago down to New Orleans by way of Indianapolis for the 500, though the Ford Focus hire car that my budget allowed was more Dagenham than Detroit.) At the heart of American Truck Simulator, SCS Software plays to both the truth and the ideal - to the monotony of endless roads, and to the heady dream of broad horizons. There's a mythical allure to American roads that's long inspired automotive pilgrimages. Occasionally a jet plane will course across the sky. It's a homecoming of sorts, not just to the country that SCS Software first explored with 18 Wheels of Steel, but also to the natural hunting ground of these beautiful beasts of industry, and to the land of the great American road trip. Pitched somewhere between a blue-collar OutRun and a greasy spoon Elite, it's no wonder these games have grown so popular in recent years.Īmerican Truck Simulator, SCS Software's long-awaited follow-up to 2012's Euro Truck Simulator 2, sings to those same rhythms, only this time with a West Coast lilt. Or maybe it's in their wonderful partnership of simulation and systems, where you crunch through 12-speed transmissions and feel the weight of a creaking 50-foot gooseneck trailer through each spin of the steering wheel while slowly building an empire of your own where big business mixes with the small, satisfying chore of a cross-state drive to pick up a set of chrome door handles for the latest addition to your fleet. Publisher: Excalibur Publishing/SCS Software.Maybe it's something in the mundane honesty of their sojourns, where long stretches of tarmac between the likes of Southampton and Sheffield pass by with a soporific hum while you fuss over each vehicle's exquisitely detailed cabin. Other games have promised the free-spirited thrill of the open road, but few have delivered it quite so well as SCS Software's truck simulator series. SCS Software's series has its grand homecoming, and a slim initial release doesn't quite hold back its measured majesty.
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