American Truck Simulator

If there's one game that has, for me, defined my last few years at RPS, it's American Truck Simulator. That singular nexus of deadly serious simulation and twinkly-eyed, chill-out road trip has helped hold me together at times when both the world and my own world threatened to fall apart, but it's also been a belated lesson that games need not be defined by skinner…

Tagged with SCS Software, Twin Peaks, American Truck Simulator, American Truck Simulator: Washington, Euro Truck Simulator 2.

My nerves have been sufficiently jangled and my trigger-finger sufficiently itched by the glut of action games which landed in the closing months of last year. I crave an altogether more sedate beginning to 2018, and so my mind turns to games in which violence, reflex or any other kind of unblinking attentiveness takes a back seat. Primarily we're talking violence-free games here, but I…

Tagged with best games, feature, Floating Point, Moutain, Abzu, American Truck Simulator, Bernband, Cities: Skylines, Desert Golfing, Euro Truck Simulator 2, Getting Over It, Gorogoa, Grow Home, Hexcells, Kentucky Route Zero, Mini Metro, osmos, Planet Coaster, Proteus, Rime, Slime Rancher, Superflight, World of Goo.

I've spent a lot more with American Truck Simulator than I have with its by-now much larger predecessor Euro Truck Simulator 2, mostly because a more distant land seemed more romantic than one I am already part of. But ATS, in its current South-Westerly configuration, is a game with a heavy reliance on rock and sand landscapes - evocative for sure, but while we await…

Tagged with feature, SCS Software, American Truck Simulator, Euro Truck Simulator 2, Euro Truck Simulator 2: Italia.

There are more wonderful games being released on PC each month than ever before. In such a time of plenty, it's important that you spend your time as wisely as possible. Thankfully, we're here to help. What follows are our picks for the best PC games ever made.

Tagged with Battle of Britain 2: Wings of Victory, best games, Combat Mission: Barbarossa To Berlin, crimson skies, Day of the Tentacle, else Heart Break, Falcon 4.0, feature, Google Doodles, Inkle Studios, NEO Scavenger, Panzer Elite, Red Baron, Silent Hunter 3, Stick Shift, Supreme Commander: Forged Alliance, The Blackwell Legacy, 80 Days, American Truck Simulator, Bernband, BioShock, Burnout Paradise, Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, Cradle, Crusader Kings II, Crypt of the NecroDancer, Dark Souls, Dark Souls: Prepare To Die Edition, Day Of The Tentacle Remastered, Deadly Premonition, Deus Ex, Devil Daggers, Divinity: Original Sin 2, Doom, Dota 2, Dragon Age: Origins, Dune II: The Battle for Arrakis, Dungeon Keeper, Dwarf Fortress, EVE Online, Fallout: New Vegas, Final Fantasy VII, Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, Half-Life, Halo, Hexcells, Hitman, Invisible Inc, League of Legends, Legend of Grimrock, Microsoft Flight Simulator X: Steam Edition, Minecraft, Nidhogg, No Man's Sky, OMSI, Oxenfree, Papers Please, Planescape: Torment, Portal 2, Proteus, Quake, S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl, Secret Habitat, Sid Meier's Civilization IV, Sid Meier's Gettysburg, Spelunky, Star Wars: Knights of The Old Republic, The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth, The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind, The Last Express, The Longest Journey, The Sims 2, The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, Thief II: The Metal Age, Thief: The Dark Project, Thirty Flights of Loving, Ultima VII, What Remains of Edith Finch, World of Warcraft, X-COM: UFO Defense.

Recently, I ran our review of American Truck Simulator: New Mexico, the first paid DLC for my all-time favourite driving game, and which adds the Union's 47th state into the game, alongside the existing California, Arizona and Nevada. Though I consider it absolutely essential, in that it really makes ATS feel like a signficant part of a country, as opposed to simply that nation's greatest…

Tagged with feature, American Truck Simulator, American Truck Simulator - New Mexico.

My friends, today I achieved the dream of dreams. I boldly went where no-one has gone before. I went behind American Truck Simulator's invisible wall. I saw the world that lay beyond the road. I saw views to take my breath away. I saw the land torn asunder. I saw the laws of physics collapse and invert. And then I met my doom.

Tagged with feature, SCS Software, American Truck Simulator, American Truck Simulator - New Mexico.

Have You Played? is an endless stream of game retrospectives. One a day, every day, perhaps for all time. Still an ongoing concern - we really want to see those states, SCS - but I'm have-you-playeding it because I suspect many people moved on from it fairly soon after launch due to its somewhat small size. You know it's huge these days, right?

Tagged with feature, Have You Played, SCS Software, American Truck Simulator.

Day seventeen of The RPS Advent Calendar, which highlights our favourite games of the year, takes us away from the red tides of murder and into absolute serenity. A driving game without races, a vehicle game more about what's at the side of the road than what's ahead of you. A state of mind as much as it is a videogame. It's American Truck Simulator!

Tagged with feature, SCS Software, The RPS Advent Calendar 2016, The RPS Bestest Best Games 2016, American Truck Simulator.

Dark days for the world. Maybe videogames can save us? Haha yes of course they can haha. Here are some really good videogames, though. They'll take you to a better place for a while. These are the RPS team's 13 personal favourites from the current Steam Summer Sale: we believe in these games, and we believe that you should play them too.

Tagged with Deadly Premonition: The Director's Cut, feature, sale, Steam, American Truck Simulator, Crypt of the NecroDancer, Dark Souls: Prepare To Die Edition, Darkest Dungeon, Duskers, Dying Light: The Following, Garry's Mod, Invisible Inc, Life Is Strange, Portal 2, Subnautica, The Talos Principle.

Truck driving games like American Truck Simulator [official site] and Euro Truck Simulator 2 [official site] are popular because they offer a routine, almost meditatively romantic simplicity — there's no lengthy checklist of deadlines to meet and stakeholders to please, no paperwork, no family to feed, no monsters to slay, nor anything else to raise your heartrate. Just you, the open road, and a cargo…

Tagged with feature, SCS, American Truck Simulator, Euro Truck Simulator 2.

We usually do our enormous GAMES OF THE YEAR posting fest at the end of the year (as would seem logical) but because it seems silly to reserve praise for special occasions we're doing a Games Of The Half Year collection to tell you about everything we've loved playing so far. It can double as a summer holiday recommendations list too! We've listed ours in…

Tagged with Best PC games 2016, feature, The Witcher 3: Blood and Wine, American Truck Simulator, Apollo 11, best pc games, Californium, Cookie Clicker, Dark Souls III, Darkest Dungeon, Day Of The Tentacle Remastered, Devil Daggers, Digital Bird Playground, Doom, Duskers, Dying Light: The Following, Enter the Gungeon, Everybody's Gone To The Rapture, Fantastic Contraption, Firewatch, Grim Dawn, Hitman, It's Spring Again, Kathy Rain, North, Offworld Trading Company, Ori and the Blind Forest: Definitive Edition, Overland, Overwatch, Oxenfree, Pony Island, Samorost 3, Sorcery! Part 3, Stardew Valley, Stellaris, Stephen's Sausage Roll, Stikbold, Subnautica, SUPERHOT, Tetrageddon Games, The Flame in the Flood, The Lab, The Witness, Tilt Brush, Total War: Warhammer, Virtual Desktop, XCOM 2.

I've rhapsodised in the past about American Truck Simulator [official site]'s many moments of zen, but I confess that I may be guilty of glossing over its many moments of hard, thankless work too. The Arizona DLC, a substantial free add-on due whose open beta is due for launch today, brings the expected dramatic scenery, but also increases some of that hard work - in…

Tagged with feature, impressions, SCS Software, American Truck Simulator.

When I was growing up in Spittoon, Texas in the mid Nineties, truck simming wasn't just encouraged, it was compulsory. Didatech's Crosscountry USA enlivened many a schoolroom and improved many a scholar. American Truck Simulator might offer handsomer highways and more realistic rigs but can it teach you which state produces 98% of the United States' low-bush blueberries and instil a life-long fear of hitchhikers?…

Tagged with Crosscountry USA, The Flare Path, American Truck Simulator.

I've talked about companion texts in Flare Path before , but I'm not sure I've ever used this column to air my companion games theory. In short I believe certain games have soul mates – titles that compliment them so perfectly that the idea of playing one without the other is almost unthinkable. The two games that make up a companion pair are usually very…

Tagged with companion games, The Flare Path, American Truck Simulator, The Pinball Arcade.

American Truck Simulator [official site] has quietly been one of RPS' most-anticipated games of 2016. Its predecessor, Euro Truck Simulator 2, has been an office favourite for a while - what, at a passing glance, might seem to be incomprehensible HGV nerdery is instead a therapeutic indulgence. The open road. The refreshing lack of urgency. The sky. Choosing only the jobs that take you where…

Tagged with feature, impressions, SCS Software, American Truck Simulator, Euro Truck Simulator 2.