Euro Truck Simulator 2 loads up Vive la France! DLC
Allez! Tout de suite!
Euro Truck Simulator 2 [official site] has become bigger, more complex, and far more French with the launch of its 'Vive la France!' paid expansion today. It redoes the western-ish side of L'Hexagone, diagonally between Le Havre and Nice (sans Paris), with miles of new roads and a makeover to just be, y'know, more French. Its villages remind me a lot of the rural France I remember from holidays so I'm content.
Vive la France! adds 20,000 kilometres of French roads (for our American readers, that's over 400,000 American football fields long), focused on this area. It also gives that zone a makeover with new landmarks, more vegetation variety, some lovely little villages, exciting industrial estates, and so on. It also introduces French industries like nuclear power and a French tollgate system. It's France+. NuFrance. France: Championship Edition Turbo EX. I Can't Believe It's Not France.
If you fancy some French listening while you haul cargo in Vive la France!, I quite like the radio station France Culture and its show Mauvais Genres. Available as a podcast, it dances around films, literature, comics, and other weird odds and ends of culture, from Philip K. Dick and Frank Zappa to Japanese love dolls and a journal of bistros, and has some nice music too. Or France Inter is a fairly nice general-purpose station. But for goodness' sake, don't try listening to French pop music radio. You might hope to discover delightful French girl groups but no, it's wall-to-wall tedious breathy pap. Some good hip hop is around (big up le Neuf-Trois!) but I don't know any particular stations.
Vive la France! is £13.39/17,99€/$18.99 on Steam.
Vive la France! is a name I will continue to enjoy writing.