Euro Truck Simulator 2’s

mods are about crafting a more personal play space to make your evening truck fun just so>. One person’s favourite sounds tweaks might sound like a broken axel grinding away to another person, which is a tricky thing to balance when gathering up some glorious gear-boxes. I took the view that the trucks themselves would be better off left largely alone and went looking for more immersive additions. Come truck with me, let’s see what I found en route.

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Kick the tires, whistle at the paint job, spin the keys on your finger like a revolver and then shoot the car with the little laser of unlocking. It’s time to get back on the road. What’s that? Entire country in a state of unprecedented lockdown? I see. Well, lucky for you, we concern ourselves here only with pretend cars, the indoor joy of fictional journeys on virtual roads. Here, my housebound friends, are the 9 best road trips in PC games. Seatbelts on, please.

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Oh, to visit Spokane on a bright summer morning. Bakersfield, Albuquerque, Reno and Salem. The evening sun shining across the surface of the I-10. In these locked-down times, American Truck Simulator is a chance to tour America, or at least its western edge, running from Washington in the north down to California in the south, and over to Utah and New Mexico in the east.

These states are articulated by highways and truck stops, industrial centres and sweeping multilevel interchanges. But that doesn t mean their sweep isn t glorious. America is, after all, built on trucking. The industry s motto is, If you bought it, a truck brought it, and in ATS you get to experience mass haulage in a world which aims to mirror, as close as it can, the great American west. But it was built in Prague, on an engine that sometimes requires clever tricks to represent the scale of it all, by a team of map designers who are strangers to American culture. (more…)

I did not expect that I would ever Google something like “will Big Ben bong?” in service to an article for RPS, and yet here we are – and it turns out it will not. The big B day has arrived, not with a bong but a whimper. It’s a sore subject for a lot of us (stuff disappearing off of Netflix; my partner is European and won’t have to queue as long at airports), a genuinely frightening one for others (unknown economic impact; forced repatriation).

As in most times of stress, I turn to video games for both a distraction from and mirror to life. I don’t even mean obviously Brexit-y things like Not Tonight or Spinnortality. There are many games notionally unrelated to today that nonetheless feel apposite to play. Here are a few that I thought of.

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Australia is still burning, but over the last couple of days they’ve actually had some rain! While this is a big help to certain areas, there are still 83 fires blazing around the country, and there’s a lot of people and wildlife still in trouble. It’s good job then that there are even more game devs, companies, and communities banding together to help out our friends down under.

A new Humble Bundle, a donation from the makers of Warframe, and a charity initiative run by Eve Online players are just three more ways the games industry is raising money, and you can get involved to show your support too.

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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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