I have this thing for simulators. I love to hunt out the most obscure Eastern European simulators such as Woodcutter Simulator or Street Cleaning Simulator. I don’t enjoy playing them, though. I suppose I just like to play the dregs in order to fully realise how lucky we actually are to have really good games. But once in awhile a simulator comes along that is genuinely really good. Euro Truck Simulator 2 is one of those games.
The good thing about simulator games is that they’re very self explanatory. About 80% of the game is accurately explained in the title alone. You drive a truck around Europe. It’s the main element of the game but there are other elements as well. You can buy more trucks and hire workers in order to grow your business, for example. And it’s really, really good.
To get the most out of this game you will need some type of stick or wheel. Driving with just your plain old keyboard will lead to issues because you can’t get the same precision that ETS2 allows. When you have a driving peripheral, though, the options are endless. ETS2 features quite an extensive settings page and you can tweak everything to suit your best setup.
When you’re not out on the wide open road, though, you’ll be managing your business. You can take out loans to buy your own truck and take on your own orders, which are a lot more lucrative than working for someone else. You can buy higher capacity garages and more trucks, hire drivers to work in these trucks and just generally grow your business. But it’s important not to spend too much time off the road because you discover truck dealers and recruitment agencies along the way and these can be very useful.
Ignoring all the technical aspects, though, Euro Truck Simulator 2 is just fun. There’s nothing better than taking off on an order and driving the open road. And who knows what you might be delivering; my last drive saw me transport cement from London to a German quarry. Delightful. The length of journeys are varying but I find most to be around the 30 minute mark. You can exit the game and it’ll save where you were and you can continue, which is a nice feature if you’re called away suddenly.
There are lots of factors to keep you busy during these drives, though. You need to manage fatigue and you’ll have to pull over into a truck stop and sleep if you begin to get tired or if you’re running low on fuel you’ll need to refill.
Where Euro Truck Simulator shines, however, is in the little things. One of my favourites is the ability to add your own radio stations to the game. All you need to do is get the stream link to the radio station you want and add it in and it’ll play while you drive. Again, it’s another layer that adds to the overall experience of the game.
Something I noticed to be detrimental to the experience is the repetition of the roads. You’ll notice a lot of the same layouts and roads after you play for a while and it’d be nice to see a little more variation. I think this is an issue that the mod community may be able to address but it would’ve been nice for it to have shipped with more roads.
Euro Truck Simulator 2 excels in every way possible. From being generally a good, realistic simulator the superb graphics that are usually non-existent in simulator games. It’s a relaxing, soothing game that provides a realistic simulation, which is what you want if you buy this game.
If you’re thinking on buying this game, we recommend the lovely folks over at GamersGate. You can find the game’s page by clicking this lovely link here!
