Video Game Review: American Truck Simulator

As part of my endevour to broaden my horrizens in gaming I picked up a game I historically made fun of: American Truck Simulator. Previously I had been of the opinion of "how could anyone seriously play driving a vehicle for hours?" And honestly I still don't fully get it. But at least now I can say its a matter of taste. The thing is I don't like driving in real life, so it is not surprising to find out that I don't like driving in a video game. At least not legal street driving, in comparison to illegal street driving: GTA, or racing: Mario Kart. But I can understand how you would enjoy this game if you enjoy driving or have a background of trucking. And I can say that fairly confidently for a few reasons:

Time Dialation

"How could you find enjoyment in spending 1-8 hours driving in a video game to complete a single job?" Was my though approaching the game. Turns out the makers of the game acknowledge this. As with just about any other simulation game, time is dialated. But Trucking sim did it in an interesting way. While you are in town, time flows at the normal speed, but while you are out on the high way time moves at about 20x as fast. What this means is your 8 hour long haul drive shrinks to 24 minutes. Shorter jobs that go just between towns can be as short as 7 minutes. These are managable time chunks. This foreshortening of the world makes the game playable. If we were to actually play over the vastness of the American west, or Europe, this it would only attrack the most dedicated of players. But what about in town? There time slows back down to normal speeds to you can handle the streets and alleys and parking lots to finish your delivery in real time. It's an interesting system and it works rather well.

Managing Trailers

This is a Trucking simulator not just a driving simulator. I spent probably a little under half of my time in the final moments of each delivery attempting to navigate the trailer into the appropriate location. This is truly challenging, particularly for some one who is not a trucker, let alone a seasoned trucker, like myself. I feel like I did pretty good for some one who hasn't ever backed a trailer in my life. I'm sure if I watched a real trucker do the backing I bet they would make it look easy. That aside I'd imagine the challenge of doing that parking would still be quite enjoyable. Espectially since some of the challenges involve backing into situations that are probably not as common. Particularly if you are a midwestern trucker the opportunities to park a trailer in a port would be a little less common.

An interesting advantage that the game has over real trucking though is camera angles. While it is obvious that you don't have quite the paneramic view play the game as you would trucking in real life, the game offers cameras mounted on bumpers, roofs, or orbiting the truck in third person. This served me as a really good cruch. I'm sure I would not have been able to accomplish some of the parking of trailers I did without it. I could move the camera all around the vehicle to get an understanding of what exactly is going on. This could work as a pretty great learning tool as a result.

Views

Speaking of panoramic views. The game knows where it's bread is buttered. And one of those places is the views as you drive. While it isn't my cup of tea, this I do understand. Seeing the majestic mountains or beautiful painted deserts etc. is a good reason to take to the open roads. While the game lacks the beauty of something as carefully crafted as Breath of the Wild, where you are expected to walk around and explore every little place, for scenery that zips by at 65+mph it is pretty good. They could use some polish on some aspects (particularly trees getting culled prematurely in rear view mirrors) but it was a pretty good level of detail for the casual eye. It was nice.

Trucks

I don't know anything about trucks so this will be brief. But there was a lot of name brands of trucks in the game. They were all recreated with a lot of attention to the detail. This is one of the other key points where the game's bread is buttered: Truckers like trucks. There was also a lot of customization. Again, if you were a trucker I'm sure this would be titalating, but it went over my head.

Places of improvements

A lot of good things to say about this game, which I'm a little surprised to see myself saying. That being said, everything has flaws, lets go into those. Bear in mind these are from the perspective of a gamer, not a trucker.

Management Sim Isn't Engaging

The game has the ability to buy garages and hire other drivers and setup your own trucking company. This is a neat addition but it is hardly fleshed out. Basically you buy a truck, hire a driver, assign the one to the other and forget them. You can do some micro management on what you want them to specialize in, but their performance is more or less just a roll of the dice. You can't assign them particular jobs, you can't have them assist you with something. Just once a day or so you get a notification of their income or their failure to find a job. This wasn't particularly interesting.

Bad Incentives

I found myself developing a lot of bad habbits quite quickly playing this game. Speeding being only one of them. It was also to annoying to deal with the camera so I would more or less just drive into an intersection and hope that if there was on coming traffic, they would stop for me. The game did not punish you anywhere near as hard as it should for causing accidents, like a couple hundred bucks. I once drove into a pylon at about 30 mph (breaking frantically) and did all of 200$ of damage to my truck. Perhaps it wouldn't have totalled the vehicle, but it should have done thousands of dollars of damage. Obviously making it true to life would have made the game a bit to punishing, but perhaps a little more than 200$ eh?

One other issue with incentives I had was with the trailer parking, the undoubtedly most interesting part of the game. But you would spend probably 10-15 minutes on the more difficult challenges and get a scant 45xp for it. For comparison the 24 minutes I just spend on an "8 hour" drive probably got me 800xp. It was not worth it to bother with the parking, so I found myself taking the easiest options so I could level up my character faster.

General Balance issues

I mentioned the unbalance of the trafic fees, but this appearently extends to the trucking company. My friend who recommended this game has a trucking company that makes more money than he can use. The game makes it just a little to easy to make money, particularly through the fire and forget trucking company. Aside from money there are also issues with the job structures. I don't know how it looks in real life, but games should not reflect real life if it makes the game lest interesting. There are three main job modes: Quick Jobs, Freight Market, Cargo Market. Quick jobs provide truck and trailer, you just drive. Freight market you provide the truck, they provide the trailer, and Cargo Market you provide truck and trailer, they provide the cargo. These should be arranged: Grunt work, Better work, Best work. However I found the quick jobs to be the most interesting out of the gate. Because I didn't have to level up my charater to get access to bigger trucks and nicer trailers in the quick job market I was essentially doing end game content from the get go. Moving extremly expensive cargo in big powerful trucks. I Then proceeded to buy my first truck and things got a little less interesting but still weren't to bad. However, now I had to drive my truck around to get to jobs instead of being magically teleported to the start of the job. Finally I earned enough to get a trailer and do the cargo market. It paid horribly cause I could only do the simplest jobs because I had the simplest trailer. This isn't a hard one to fix honestly. I'd recommend two changes: 1. Block lower level plays from jobs whose trailers the player has not unlocked yet. 2. Make the freight market notably more rewarding than quick jobs, and cargo more rewarding than freight.

Conclusion

I had more fun than I expected. It was a great game to play while listening to audio books, not unlike real driving. Over all though it is not my taste in game so have ceased playing with a lot of things still un-done. Never the less I gave it a good effort and played over 15 hours.