Euro Truck Simulator 2 or as I, an American, call it: unafforable vacation simulator has a new region dropping today. The next expansion available for one of few games to rival The Sims for number of DLCs is headed to eastern Europe with the Road To The Black Sea.

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Euro Truck Simulator 2‘s ever-expanding web of tarmac is about to ensnare three more victims. The next nations to be added to the premier truck ’em up are Bulgaria, Romania and a teeny tiny bit of Turkey, arriving Thursday the 5th with the Road To The Black Sea DLC. Next week’s expansion lets you explore the bottom right corner of Europe, arcing towards the inland sea with a trail of lush hillsides and complex border control checks.

No, you can’t have the rest of Turkey. It’s called Eurotrucks for a reason.

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I’ve sometimes joked that sandbox haulage RPG Euro Truck Simulator 2 is The Witcher 3 for truckers. I feel vindicated now. Thanks to a recent beta patch with only “voice for navigation” listed as a feature, you can have everyone’s favourite white-haired monster hunter guide you to your destination. It’s not just Geralt, of course, but a range of sat-nav voice options, three of which are done by Doug Cockle, Geralt’s English voice actor. He’s perhaps a little out of practice, but the voice labelled ‘Doug (Raspy)’ is as close as you can get to Geralt without angering lawyers. You can have a listen to the voice below and find a link to that (unofficial, made by “theZash”) skin too.

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Give it another couple years, and Euro Truck Simulator 2 and its American cousin will have mapped most of the roads of the world. Next on SCS Software’s checklist is the Road To The Black Sea expansion, adding the route to Turkey via Romania and Bulgaria to Euro Truck Sim 2. While a night-time trip through the Carpathian mountains and an overnight stop in Transylvania may sound thrilling, those dwindling profit margins prove that the world is the only vampire that counts. The new roads will be open later this year, and you can take a peek at the scenery in the trailer below.

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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 boxes and power fantasies. The magic of the ordinary, but the ordinary transplanted to another place, free from all pressures. Most of all, the peace and freedom of the road.

It’s now time for me to say goodbye, to RPS and perhaps to the overall business of writing opinions about videogames. There’s only one way to go out.

One last drive. And, thanks to some very kind folks at ATS developer SCS, I get to make that last drive in a work-in-progress build of the forthcoming Washington DLC – the state I’ve long been most desperate to drag 18 wheels across.

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For some American or Euro Truck Simulatorettes, as I’ve decided we pretend long-distance haulage fans should call ourselves, news of a new type of vehicle or trailer is reason to celebrate. For me, the most excited I’ve ever been about American Truck Sim patch notes is the declaration that they’ve just made rain better.

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I, Alice Bee, have returned from a week off and everything has changed. Matt is in the office now, and complained about having to get up at 8.15am. This complaint made me furious and I am telling everyone. My desk has been moved. There is no milk in the fridge. I am confused, and I can’t remember all the HTML codes to write this very post. It’s going to take ages. The new world is terrifying. But we always have the Steam Charts, even when John is away on his> holidays.

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Tomorrow, Euro Truck Simulator 2 comes (tragically) the closest it is ever likely to come to Eurovision Truck Simulator – with a wink and a smile, giving up on the idea that ‘Euro’ is any particular barrier to entry. I look forward to the surely forthcoming ETS2: Australia DLC. But for now, we get Beyond The Baltic Sea. Newbie ETS2 nations Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia are all EU member states, so fair dinkum there, mate – but not so much Russia, some of the more Westerly reaches of which are now also accessible on 18 wheels.

It’s SCS’s wonderful Truck Simulator series boldly embracing a whole new geopolitical region – and quite likely laying the groundwork for years of ongoing expansion, a la its splendid cousin American Truck Sim, rather than our getting a separate Putin Truck Simulator at some point. Question is, how different does St Petersburg feel from Swansea and Stockholm?

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The next bit of DLC for Euro Truck Simulator 2 is due to launch next week, and will expand the already-massive truck ’em up to Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, as well western parts of Russia and southern Finland. Another thirteen thousand kilometres of new roads to explore, say developers SCS Software. The day they figure out how to just import Google Maps into the game, I swear we’ll lose a few thousand people to Truck Fever. Until then, Beyond The Baltic Sea looks like the next best thing. It’s out November 29th. Enjoy the folk-metal-infused (yet relaxing) trailer below.

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We’ve just passed the half-way point of 2018, so Ian Gatekeeper and all his fabulously wealthy chums over at Valve have revealed which hundred games have sold best on Steam over the past six months. It’s a list dominated by pre-2018 names, to be frank, a great many of which you’ll be expected, but there are a few surprises in there.

2018 releases Jurassic World Evolution, Far Cry 5 Kingdom Come: Deliverance and Warhammer: Vermintide II are wearing some spectacular money-hats, for example, while the relatively lesser-known likes of Raft, Eco and Deep Rock Galactic have made themselves heard above the din of triple-A marketing budgets. (more…)