Another corner of Europe is getting expanded and fancied up later this year, with the next Euro Truck Simulator 2 [official site] DLC off to Italy. Like the recent French expansion, Italia will expand and update the country with new cities and more unique features. The handful of Italian cities already in the game will be updated to match for free for everyone too. Read the rest of this entry »
A stretch of the iconic Route 66 in American Truck Simulator [official site] will play the song ‘America the Beautiful’ as we drive our trucks over it. The DLC adding New Mexico will include a real stretch of road near Tijeras which really does play a song, a real thing I haven’t made up. ‘Musical roads’ are a clever idea, similar to the rumble strips that make cars buzz as a warning but tuning them (by varying the distance between grooves) to play music. My dream ATS is filled with Americana and oddities so this is a real treat. Read the rest of this entry »
I like American Truck Simulator [official site] because it’s a dreamland version of the USA, one which looks a bit like the country does in movies but is quite separate from reality. This will soon change. Developers SCS Software have announced that ATS’s next update will soon close a section of its virtual Highway 1, reflecting the the real Californian landslide near Big Sur in May. If you want to haul cargo round that way in American Truck Simulator, you’ll need to take a detour. Read the rest of this entry »
RPS Feature 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? Read the rest of this entry »
Bendy double trailers are coming to American Truck Simulator [official site] and Euro Truck Simulator 2 [official site] this summer, which sounds a treat for serious truckers and a nightmare for me, an idiot who sees Truck Sim as a walking simulator following routes. To virtuatruckers, double trailers are a feature requested for years. To me, double trailers will surely be a way to crash and wedge even more as I try to turn and reverse, like a rambler who forgets they’re wearing a huge backpack and falls flat on their face every time their megabag bumps on a stile. Read the rest of this entry »
The next state being added to American Truck Simulator [official site] is New Mexico, developers SCS Software announced. The Land of Enchantment, locals call it. The Cactus State! Land of Sunshine! Mexico Plus! Mexico Gold! I Can’t Believe It’s Not Mexico! SCS’s recent update upscaling the continent “transforms a great game into a sublime one”, our Alec will tell you, and now they’re done embiggenning SCS have moved back to expanding. No word yet on when New Mexico will arrive but SCS do share a few pictures to peek at for now (hit the announcement for bigguns). Read the rest of this entry »
RPS Feature 2016's best driving game
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!
America is now bigger than ever as American Truck Simulator [official site] has officially launched its rescaling, going from 1:35 scale to 1:20. This means longer roads and grander landscapes, and developers SCS Software have rebuilt a lot to be more interesting and varied too, including new landmarks. The new scale “transforms a great game into a sublime one”, our Alec declared after playing a beta version, and I’ve certainly been impressed by it too. The update is now live so it should be waiting for you next time you slip on your “Keep on trucking” cap and crack open a Bud Light. Read the rest of this entry »
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. Read the rest of this entry »
While American Truck Simulator has recently received a lot of love and care from developers SCS Software, it turns out they haven’t forgotten about Europe. Euro Truck Simulator 2 [official site] is now getting another expansion. Vive La France enlarges France, adding more detail, more towns and 20,000km more roads. It’s due out next week on December 5th and there’s a trailer below.
RPS Feature Westcoastworld
It has been quite the year, politically and personally. I bend no truth when I say that, were it possible to spend 16 hours a day pretending to be a lorry driver in a computer game, I would seize that opportunity gladly. The simplicity of having to get from point A to point B, the slow-motion pressure-and-release of needing to refuel, a view of the world that is landscape-led, not people-centric. American Truck Simulator [official site] is not, first and foremost, a motorised vehicle simulation game. It is pure escape, genuine freedom via a screen, as close as it comes to a real roadtrip without the expense and discomfort.
Unfortunately, ATS’ initial vision of America, as well as being thus far limited to California, Arizona and Nevada, was hyper-compressed. Journeys were measured in minutes, not hours, day/night flew by like nature documentary montages, and open land was but a quickly-drawn breath between suburbs and cities. I loved it, but it felt bite-size; America: The Trailer, not America: The Movie.
Things have changed, and beautifully so.
The people have spoken, and they want America proper dirty gert big. Leading ideas in the office of President-elect Trump include switching to metric so distances sound greater, breeding miniature cows to mess with perspective, and raising the bedrock on pneumatic lifts so the ground is closer to everyone’s eyes. Good ideas, okay, very smart. The biggest. You’ll love them. But in American Truck Simulator [official site], developers SCS Software have simply made the whole dang land bigger. They’ve been working on rescaling the world of their haul ’em up, making it larger and more interesting, and players can see the results themselves now in an open beta. Read the rest of this entry »
RPS Feature In G1 or Bayformer flavours
It’s been a week of unspeakable magnitude. Never mind the impending fall of society: the Peterbilt 389 has just been added to American Truck Simulator [official site]. The 389 is the updated model of the 379, a true legend of the road. I write that as though I know anything at all about trucks. I don’t, apart this: Optimus Prime is a Peterbilt 379.
Well, he is now, in those frightful Michael Bay movies. Before that he was a Freightliner. It is extremely important to me that I have a choice of Optimii for my pretend lorry driving, and so it is that I bring you this unspeakably vital guide on how to introduce either classic, or ‘G1’, Prime or movieverse Prime into the wonderful ATS.
Read the rest of this entry »
American Truck Simulator [official site] offers a fine bit of pootling but it’s lacked three things I’d want in My Dream American Driving Experience: a grander scale; a steering wheel whose spokes were gleaming chromed revolvers with ivory grips; and actual proper redwoods. Well! It’s getting close. Developers SCS Software have been working on upscaling ATS for a few months, and now they’ve released cosmetic DLC adding licensed recreations of flashy and absurd steering wheels made for actual trucks by Steering Creations. And heck yes it has a six shooter wheel.
The dream of American trucking is big skies and grand vistas. American Truck Simulator [official site] is okay at that, especially since Arizona arrived, but it can feel a little dinky. Developers SCS Software have a plan. As well as adding extra states, SCS have announced they’re making the whole game bigger by rescaling the world in a future free update. It’ll go from 1:35 scale to 1:20, which SCS say will mean “75% longer roads outside the cities”. They’re also reworking the landscape for a bigger sense of scale and gosh, this is awfully exciting! Give me those grander vistas.
Euro Truck Simulator 2 [official site] now has “National Window Flags” DLC, allowing you to stick your preferred country’s flag onto the side of your cab. It’s a small cosmetic paid-for bit of DLC but its release coincides with the ramping up of Euro 2016 interest and prompted some interesting reading about how national sides work in international football.
The red dust, big skies, twisting roads, and dirty gert big hole of Arizona are now open to visit in American Truck Simulator [official site]. Creators SCS Software today properly launched their truck ’em up’s free Arizona expansion, following a short stretch in open beta. Young Alec really enjoyed visiting Nevada in ATS.
American Truck Simulator [official site] today opened up its fun-sized recreation of Arizona to everyone, launching into open beta. Our Alec jumped the state line to play early and enjoyed what he found, from twisting roads to the Grand Canyon. Here, a new trailer gives a nice short look at it all:
RPS Feature Hands-on with the beta for the new State
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 interesting ways. Also, there is a canyon which I suspect one could safely describe as ‘grand.’
In news that’s sure to please happy haulers either side of the Atlantic, both American Truck Simulator [official site] and its slightly older European cousin Euro Truck Simulator 2 now have Steam Workshop support. Both already supported mods, but now they’re simpler to install. Also, courtesy of the former’s 1.2 update and the latter’s 1.23 one, a range of options have also been added to both games’ wheel customisation suites, while new Wheel Tuning DLC packs hope to hand you the hottest rims on the open road.
