You already know, it honestly seems like a joke at first. There’s thousands of games on the market – some offer compelling storylines, others provide non-cease thrills, and just about all of them allow us to escape the dull monotony and grind of each day life... After which there’s Euro Truck Simulator 2. Which, unsurprisingly, is a simulation game the place you drive trucks around a crude rendition of Europe. Okaaaay.

To stress the absurdity of things, you only need to look at the essential gameplay loop that’s taking place right here; you pick a job from a listing of options in your area. You go and hitch up your cargo. Then you slowly trundle towards your vacation spot, taking into account every road law and pace restrict, and spending the nice majority of your time on huge highways and endless strips of asphalt. After dragging yourself to your destination for 20 to 30 real-time minutes, you drop off the cargo – and do the whole thing again.

Suffice to say, then, that this isn’t for everyone; there’s a very good probability a number of of you may have fell asleep merely reading the last paragraph. In case you do truly get to the purpose where you boot up the game for the primary time, it even does so much to try and immediately frighten you off... You’re instantly met with a plethora of menus that are incredibly overwhelming, allowing you to do everything from create a profile to adjusting your X-axis sensitivity for... Effectively, something. The tutorial then doesn’t assist matters, basically stemming right down to telling you "Just drive the truck", after which buggering off and leaving you to work out how exactly you do that within the first place.

Yet give it an opportunity to get things rolling and – amazingly and most crucially – it really works. There’s a bunch of reasons why this is the case, that go means beyond the primal satisfaction that comes with driving a hulking nice large rig. For one, there’s an incredibly calming sense of gradual development continually burning away within the background, with the sat-nav in the corner of your screen at all times slowly ticking down the miles left towards your destination. It’s surprisingly satisfying to observe the numbers preserve dropping, and finally whittling a distance that seemed not possible to start with all the way down to nothing.

Secondly, there's the option to turn on your own music while driving, and even tune in to precise radio stations across Europe. Set one in every of these up and hit the perfect moment, where the proper track comes on as you watch the sun slowly rise and peep through the bushes, and it all just feels… Right. Heck, take my word for it after I say that having AC/DC’s "Highway to Hell" blasting out your speakers as you’re racing down the road at max velocity is something that’s hard to beat. If you happen to’re daring, you can even pop a video or TV show up in one other window and zone out... But just like real life, the possibilities of you suddenly finding yourself wrapped spherical the nearest streetlight rapidly improve if you happen to do this. Nonetheless, it’s fun to try. Within the game, that is.

There’s additionally a healthy degree of strategy combined in as well. Your truck needs fuel and your driver needs relaxation, and managing the 2 becomes a fragile balancing act of efficient time management, where you're continuously checking out your route and seeing how far you can push yourself before you actually fall asleep at the wheel. While it takes method too lengthy in the event you’re not wishing to place your self ready of utmost bank debt (a lot so it truly gets a little bit frustrating), you possibly can even make sufficient money to hire other truckers to your cause. Abruptly you’re busy plotting out an empire, trucks roaming across all of Europe, and your hard work being rewarded with a skyrocketing bank account. You may even make the core game more sophisticated, in the event you’re that way inclined. An automatic gearbox is likely to be the obvious choice, however there’s nothing stopping you from having to modify by means of all the gears manually, or even hooking a wheel up and going totally crazy. The selection, as they are saying, is yours.

It’s also price mentioning all of the mods which can be available to enhance or change things up – from the massive adjustments to the little tweaks, there’s rather a lot you may bolt on to the base experience. Whether it be branding the sides of trucks with famous logos, or subtly altering the map and the best way your truck handles, there’s lots you may tinker about with if things are starting to really feel slightly dry. Special shout out to the mod that lets you personalise the inside of your truck – because there’s something irresistible about decking out your cabin with an enormous BB-eight and a bunch of other nerdy fine details that fill up each empty space. While not offered within the game or mods themselves (and I am unable to say I tried this myself), there’s additionally means on the market to take things online, hitting the road with truckers all over the world. Chances are you’ll find yourself in a traffic jam making an attempt to get a ferry to somewhere, but hey, no matter floats your boat.