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. … [visit site to read more]

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.

… [visit site to read more]

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.

… [visit site to read more]

I believe I can drive. I believe I can touch the sky. I think about it every night and day, turboblast and fly away. So, y’know, I’m excited to hear that carball ‘em up Rocket League [official site] is adding its promised basketball-y Hoops mode next Tuesday, April 26th. It’s coming in a free update. Here, watch this (parking) space jam:

… [visit site to read more]

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.

… [visit site to read more]

SCS Software sont… oh bugger it, I’ll spare you my broken French. Let’s start over.

SCS Software are busy trucking around America now, but they still have a folks who stayed home to keep an eye on Europe. The Euro Truck Simulator 2 [official site] team have announced they’re revamping and expanding France in a “major DLC expansion”, which sounds lovely. America’s wide skies may be a place of dreams for me, but I wouldn’t say no to pootling around Normandy either.

… [visit site to read more]

We were somewhere north of Barstow on the edge of the desert – no, really, we actually were, I was so pleased – when awareness began to take hold. I rent squalid office space with two people from different companies, and they were baffled when the dull rock soundtrack of American Truck Simulator [official site]’s title screen began leaking from my speakers. Of all the games in the world, why would I choose to play this? Worst case scenario: every stereotype about PC gaming confirmed. Best case scenario: I was playing this profoundly boring driving simulator ironically. Mad Skill, No Plow, 360 Crop Rotation and all that.

By the end of the day, after hours of watching me drive through California’s forests and Nevada’s deserts, the three of us had grown appreciably closer. As night fell on San Francisco, we swapped rueful tales of love, sex and booze from our youth. As day broke over Reno, we sang in broken harmony to Gimme Shelter. As I rolled carefully into a depot in pitch-black Oakland after a long, long night’s drive, someone volunteered “shall I get some beers in?” We sat back in our seats and sighed contentedly. Our American road trip.

… [visit site to read more]

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 you wanna go. The tranquil click-click-click of the indicators. Freedom.

Transpose that to California and Nevada – small towns, big cities, bigger deserts and even bigger skies – and the promise is irresistible. The quintessential truck driver fantasy. Can it be true? I spent a few hours on the freeway to find out. … [visit site to read more]

Christmas is, of course, the time when Santa Claus comes to visit every lucky boy and girl. He does that in the form of a rosy-cheeked image, plastered across the side of a Coca Cola truck. Nothing says “goodwill to all” quite like an appropriated corporate mascot slapped on the flank of a vehicle delivering syrupy slugs of overpriced brown fizz to the masses.

There’s one truck that almost certainly won’t> be driving home for Christmas though. American Truck Simulator [official site]. And that makes this the worst festive season since the time a ghost told me that nobody liked me and that an undertaker would steal the pants from my corpse.

… [visit site to read more]

Have You Played? is an endless stream of game recommendations. One a day, every day of the year, perhaps for all time.>

Euro Truck Simulator 2 [official site] is one of my favourite games of the last few years. I think we’ve surpassed the point where I have to ensure that everyone understands that I’m not joking. I hope that people have started to realise that Euro Trucking is as valid and enjoyable a gaming habit as murdering, looting and doing a sport.

… [visit site to read more]