Have You Played... American Truck Simulator?
Escape plan
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?
American Truck Simulator [official site] was my go-to time-to-myself game even before the 'rescale' that massively hiked up the size of its landscapes and the lengths of its roads. A combination of half-filmic, half-mundance scenery, refreshingly slow vehicular motion and the crucial ability to tune the radio to either hilariously local stations or a soundtrack of your own choosing made it a bliss-out roadtrip game even when the roads were short.
Now they are long, and I can spend hours driving them with no particular place to go. It is heaven. Even with only three states, it's a glorious state-of-mind journey to nowhere, peppered with sights seen on other screens. The closest thing to driving them for real, with none of the footcramp and worrying about getting murdered in a motel in the middle of nowhere.
I cannot wait for the day when all or at least most of the states have been included. I'll book a week off work, I'll ceremonially bolt my plastic steering wheel to my desk, and I shall drive.