When times get tough and winter seems endless, just remember the wise words of many a mesh-back cap: keep on trucking. What welcome news, then, that yet another expansion is in the works for Euro Truck Simulator 2. The 'Nordic Horizons' expansion will offer new routes including through Finland's Lapland, Sweden's Norrland, and up through Norway all the way to the Arctic Ocean, with pretty things to admire ranging from bridges and tunnels to cute fishing villages and reindeer. That'll keep you trucking when daylight dips below six hours in Norway, though you might need to wait a few years for it.
]]>Euro Truck Simulator 2's next DLC was going to be headed to Russia, with signifcant work on creating the vast country already finished. Now developers SCS Software say that they've decided not to release the expansion, "so that it is not perceived in any way as being in support of or tolerance of the aggression."
]]>I have spent hours watching trucking videos on YouTube. I enjoy watching the scenery roll past the window of people hauling freight while I'm working.
It's just as relaxation when the scenery is virtual. SCS Software have just released 20 minutes of the next expansion for Euro Truck Simulator 2, Heart Of Russia, showing the journey from Vyazma to Kaluga.
]]>After adding official multiplayer modes to American Truck Simulator and Euro Truck Simulator 2, developers SCS Software have now made both support mods in multiplayer too. They're games many truckers mod with the trucks and decor of their dreams, so it'll be nice to show everyone your true truck self. I'd call this your drivatar but Forza has already claimed that.
]]>Euro Truck Simulator 2 and American Truck Simulator developers SCS Software are still at work on their official multiplayer support for both truck sims. The Convoy game mode will let up to eight players hop in a private session together to complete jobs on the open road with synced traffic and weather. It's still in an experimental state, SCS warn, but they've made the first version available on a beta branch for those who are determined to go on a test drive.
]]>It's been a while since I've booted up Euro Truck Simulator 2 and gone for a relaxing drive myself, but it remains just so delightfully wholesome. These people, they love trucks.
After update 1.40 revamped the game's lighting system back in March, developers SCS Software have been working on a revamp of the game's photo mode. When 1.41 launches, you'll now be able to fiddle with the time of day and the weather, so you can capture your truck looking its best.
]]>Euro Truck Simulator 2's Iberia DLC is out now, adding Spain and Portugal to the expansive driving game. That includes major new cities including Porto, Madrid and Barcelona, plus the Tabernas Desert, and new resources to ship such as automobiles.
There's a recent trailer below that let's you take in the sights.
]]>Now, more than ever, we find hope in the old words: keep on truckin'. We shall. One day after launching a big update for American Truck Simulator, developers SCS today kept on truckin' with a big patch for Euro Truck Simulator 2 too. Like the ATS patch, this introduces their pretty new lighting system. Unlike the ATS patch, because it would be wholly geographically inappropriate, this patch also remakes parts of Germany. You couldn't just go and put Dusseldorf in Colorado; people wouldn't stand for it.
]]>Get ready to update your itinerary because Euro Truck Simulator 2 is making some new travel plans. The trucking sim is still scheduled to visit Iberia in April, but SCS Software have let on where they're headed after. They'll be venturing further east again in the Heart Of Russia DLC that's just been revealed. It's a ways off, but they've shared some details and quite a few screenshots of the next DLC.
]]>You probably shouldn’t watch this Euro Truck Simulator 2 update video while operating heavy machinery. This showcase of the new Iberia Peninsula (“Ibby Penny” to its friends) map expansion shows a short hop from the port in Algeciras to Malaga, perhaps delivering boxed copies of the very expansion they’re showing off in the video? Anyway, it will gently lull you into a trucky torpor as the player winds through the Spanish roads, so please don’t watch and drive.
]]>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.
]]>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.
]]>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.
]]>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.
]]>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.
]]>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.
]]>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.
]]>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.
]]>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.
]]>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.
]]>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.
]]>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?
]]>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.
]]>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.
]]>As SCS Software continue to add to Europe with Euro Truck Simulator 2 (the next expansion focuses on the Baltics), older parts are starting to look a little scrappy. The latest update added more life to its roads but now SCS are thinking bigger. They're currently working on revamping Germany for a free update overhauling its autobahns, touching up its cities, replanting its forests, and generally making it a nicer place to chill out. This process will take some time but SCS today shared a few peeks at the impressive improvements. They'll overhaul more countries later too.
]]>The enduring success of SCS's Truck Simulator series is no huge surprise, even if its initial ascent to fame was unexpected. The combination of light business management, relaxing, meditative repetition and gorgeously recreated environments make for an ideal chill-out experience for people who haven't done long, tiresome driving for a job already. Today, both American Truck Sim and Euro Truck Sim 2 get a little bit bigger, as Patch 1.31 arrives for both games, adding new roads and features to both.
]]>17 years a games journalist. I was there for the reveal of Half-Life 2, the comeback(s) of Deus Ex, the splendour of Spelunky, the rise of Plunkbat and that horrifying time that grown men wept when they heard they could hold two guns at once in Halo 2. And yet here I am, very probably more excited than at any other point in my ridiculous career, because I'm looking at screenshots of truckstops in Oregon.
American Truck Simulator, bliss-out game to end all bliss-out games, is gearing up to welcome us to its next state, and its greenest one yet. I am so ready for Oregon.
]]>Oh no. Somebody sound the “journalists discussing journalism” klaxon. Rattle it as loudly and furiously as possible, because the RPS podcast, the Electronic Wireless Show, is talking about how being a critic changes the way we play. Don’t blame us, blame listener Aleksei, who sent in the theme as a suggestion. But please also forgive Adam, because it’s his last showing on the podcast (he’s leaving RPS next week) so he deserves a bit of self-indulgence.
]]>Our Adam once told a story in the RPS treehouse about meeting with folks from Truck Simulator developers SCS Software, who were surprised and somewhat confused by how much we're into their virtuatrucks in totally non-ironic ways as chillout games. We really are. (Well, when we're not modding horns into alien wails.) You'll get to see this encounter happen again live on stage in April at EGX Rezzed, the London games show run by our corporate siblings, as Adam will host an interview with two SCS fellas.
]]>Euro Truck Simulator 2 developers SCS Software today announced a new expansion for their cheery truck 'em up, tentatively named Beyond The Baltic Sea. It will add new land to pootle around the Baltic sea, with the Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, along with a chunk of Russia through to Saint Petersburg and a sliver of southern Finland. The expansion is still a way away but that just gives plenty of time to plan your honking holiday.
]]>Post-processing tools for games aren't new - hello Reshade and SweetFX - but the world of dramatically altering a PC game's appearance with what could loosely be described as real-time Instragram filters has always been a scrappy wild west. Nvidia have this week built themselves a governor's mansion on this new frontier, introducing a feature called 'Freestyle' to the GeForce Experience suite of game optimisation, streaming and screenshotting tools. It might lack the open source and community-driven scope of ReShade, but it's easier and slicker to use on the games that support it - and the results can be dramatic. Gimmicky, sure, but making a game you're otherwise tiring of into a neon fever-dream can be a real shot in the arm.
Presenting for your wide-eyed delectation and howling disapproval - Plunkbat: The Animated Series, Assassin's Creed Oranges: Vice City and American Truck Simulator: Grindhouse Edition.
]]>I want you to do three things before you watch the below. First, I want you to reassure anyone else in your household or workplace that they are perfectly safe, no matter what they might hear. Then I want you to turn your volume up very loud indeed. Finally, I want you to imagine yourself not as the driver of the truck you will see, but as the driver of the small, cream-coloured car in front of it.
A lonely freeway, late at night. No sound but the thrum of your engine. And then.
]]>Another year over, a new one just begun, which means, impossibly, even more games. But what about last year? Which were the games that most people were buying and, more importantly, playing? As is now something of a tradition, Valve have let slip a big ol' breakdown of the most successful titles released on Steam over the past twelve months.
Below is the full, hundred-strong roster, complete with links to our coverage if you want to find out more about any of the games, or simply to marvel at how much seemed to happen in the space of 52 short weeks.
]]>How can Father Christmas deliver presents to all the children of the world in only one night? Magic. However, Sinterklaas has been caning the peppermint schnapps and wouldn't say no to a bit of help from truckers. American Truck Simulator and Euro Truck Simulator 2 have launched festive events challenging virtuatruckers to haul gifts across Europe and Americky. That's a great act of kindness, and Father Christmas of course loves that stuff, so in return the games offer honking helpers gifts such as truck paint jobs and cabin decorations including a real uncle-lookin' snowman.
]]>I've spent a lot more with American Truck Simulator than I have with its by-now much larger predecessor Euro Truck Simulator 2, mostly because a more distant land seemed more romantic than one I am already part of. But ATS, in its current South-Westerly configuration, is a game with a heavy reliance on rock and sand landscapes - evocative for sure, but while we await a hoped-for move to greener states such as Oregon, ETS2 is there to fill the verdant gap. This Mediterranean allure of this week's massively-expanded Italy DLC proved especially irresistible.
Three things: 1) it's remarkable how different ETS2 feels from ATS, despite broadly being the same game 2) Italia is the prettiest Truck Sim module yet 3) even so, the Truck Sim games now badly need a big visual overhaul.
]]>Europe’s lovely leg has been given a makeover in Euro Truck Simulator 2. Italy has been expanded and fleshed out in the new Italia expansion (and a bit in the base game), so if you’ve ever dreamed of spending your days transporting grapes and marbles up and down winding roads, you’ve got no more excuses for putting it off. It’s out now.
]]>While my trucking dreams took me to the big skies of American Truck Simulator, some still follow roads closer to home. Euro Truck Simulator 2 will revisit Italy in its next paid add-on, expanding and revamping the country. That will launch next Tuesday, the 5th of December, developers SS Software announced today. Perhaps, as our country tries to hack itself off Europe (accidentally severing several fingers with a Stanley knife and pulping its toes with a fumbled hammer in the process), Europe will seem fancier and I'll soon find myself dreaming of these lands. For now, have a look at Italia in this trailer:
]]>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.
]]>Navigate the gallery by clicking on the left and right arrows or use the left and right cursor keys on your keyboard!
Real life is rubbish sometimes, and there’s nothing that video games can do about that. But I know that if I’ve had a particularly tough day at work, then sitting down at my PC and visiting a different world can often be exactly what I need to unwind.
]]>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.
]]>Alec is away this week, following the Vengaboys around on tour. Or, if they're not currently touring, just visiting places they've been, taking photos and placing them inside his scrapbook alongside some brief reflections. That means it falls to me to tell you which ten games were the best selling on Steam in the past week, and there are some pleasant games inside.
]]>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.
]]>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.
]]>I've played a few games about roadtrips recently. It wasn't intentional, though I do love the idea of games about journeys, they all just happened to land in my lap at the same time. First up was Overland, a turn-based tactical post-apocalyptic game about travelling across a bug-infested America. Then there was The Crew, in which I competed with Brendan in a race. That also took me across the US. If you'd rather escape the US, check out the excellent Death Road to Canada, which is funny, short and sweet...with lots of guts and headshots.
And there's Jalopy, a game about car maintenance and travelling across the former Eastern bloc. Finally, I spun the Wheels of Aurelia, the most interesting of the three in many ways. That's a game about the conversations you have with people as you drive, rather than the driving itself.
]]>Truck driving games like American Truck Simulator [official site] and Euro Truck Simulator 2 [official site] are popular because they offer a routine, almost meditatively romantic simplicity — there's no lengthy checklist of deadlines to meet and stakeholders to please, no paperwork, no family to feed, no monsters to slay, nor anything else to raise your heartrate. Just you, the open road, and a cargo to haul somewhere.
For one group of players, however, the escapism offered by truck sims goes to another level. It's not just an escape from the chaos and stress of their everyday life, but also an escape into a former life. For retired truckers, truck sims are a way to return to life on the road — a life they loved. In virtual form.
]]>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.
]]>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:
]]>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.
]]>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.
]]>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.
]]>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.
]]>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.
]]>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.
]]>I'm always fascinated how people customise things, from pencil cases to player characters - and trucks, of course. Euro Truck Simulator 2 [official site] lets folks fancy up their rigs with fancy paint jobs, but now with new DLC opens a wonderful new space to blow cash on trinkets to make you happy, adding cabin accessories.
Nodding dogs, pennants, hula dancers, laptops, handbags, ice boxes, and fluffy dice are among the treasures truckers can now fill their cabins with, and yeah, I am keen to see the scenes people create. Have a look at all this junk:
]]>I've been on holiday, which means I've spent more energy walking around and looking at things, than I do when I'm at work. It's a tricky thing, this holiday business. How am I supposed to enjoy the majesty of nature (and the cold pint in a country pub that waits at the end of nature) when my muscles are aching, the sweat is like an oil slick on my brow, and I've fallen into the habit of checking my maps every fifteen minutes because I'm convinced I'm walking in the wrong direction.
]]>Q: What is green and scaly, weighs 20 tonnes, has a fearsome roar audible a mile away, moves at up to 70km/h, and can haul a load of wood shavings from Felixstowe to Kiel in 14 hours?
A: A truck with a sweet prehistoric paintjob.
A pack of six really very swish dinoskins are now roaring around in Euro Truck Simulator 2 [official site] as a £1.59 DLC pack, which is both cheaper and more fun than Jurassic World. "NICE" I shouted in the RPS treehouse when I saw them. On top of that, developers SCS recently dropped a respectable update adding a mod manager and more.
]]>The worst music. The worst. And yet, at the same time, the Beach Boys-as-muzak soundtrack to this new American Truck Simulator [official site] footage entirely fits the faintly awkward cheesiness of the sterling lorry driver series. I sort of love it.
]]>What are the best Steam Summer Sale deals? Each day for the duration of the sale, we'll be offering our picks - based on price, what we like, and what we think more people should play. Read on for the five best deals from day 7 of the sale.
]]>Ready to discover once-and-for-all whether X-Plane is better than FSX? Whether Falcon 4.0 is better than Milk Float Simulator 2012? Ready to read the word 'realism' 46 times in a single hour, and spit feathers on discovering that the sim that caused got you through your divorce has been cruelly cold-shouldered by an idiot with a bus fetish and a sci-fi blindspot the size of the Crab Nebula? You are? Splendid. You're in the right place.
We are just one day away from the release of the Scandinavia expansion for Euro Truck Simulator 2 [official site], and Alec's review is already in progress. I imagine that even as I'm typing these words he's navigating fjords, shipping Moomins, solving grim transnational murders, and explaining to onlookers that, though included in this DLC and part of the cultural region, Denmark is not strictly speaking a part of the Scandinavian peninsula.
Me? I've got to settle for this all-too exciting launch trailer.
]]>Euro Truck Simulator 2 [official site] has long captivated Adam and I with its surprising mixture of relaxing night drives and compulsive business management mechanics, but the area it most needs improvement is in its scenery. I play it in order to slip into a trance of cornering and lane transitions, but I'd be pulled from my roadriding reverie less often if the view beyond my windshield didn't remain so similar regardless of whether I was in Plymouth or Poland.
SCS Software promise that approaching DLC expansion Scandinavia will satisfy my hunger for greater diversity in my scenery and service stations, stating in a blog post that they've thrown more artists at the peninsula than anything they've released previously, including ETS2 itself. Check if they're right with the teaser trailer and screenshots below.
]]>As if the upcoming release of American Truck Simulator [official site] wasn't enough, SCS Software are continuing to expand Euro Truck Simulator 2 [official site]. The Scandinavian DLC will be with us soon and the map has finally been revealed. It doesn't cover the Northern reaches of the Northern reaches, but there are plenty of cities scattered around, and SCS reckon the roads and scenery will be their most detailed to date.
...the highways, roads and city streets are now a much more detailed system than what we currently have in the older parts of our ETS2 universe.
I want to go there.
]]>American Truck Simulator [official site-ish] looks hard. Parallel parking is already the devil, but the idea of slotting ten tons of flammable material into the back of gas station just takes things to extremes. SCS Software recently unleashed an hour's worth of alpha gameplay footage from the game and it's precisely what you might have expected: careful turns; meticulous inspections of both wing mirrors; the mandatory leaning-out-of-windows to check for passing school kids.
]]>I've been robbed! I got up this morning to find my office ransacked and my mahogany word cabinet agape. Among the items taken were the words listed above. In the circumstances, covering this week's wargame releases could be tricky. Perhaps I should stick to sim-related news, interviews and observations today.
]]>I want to play a game about tourism. It's odd that I can fight in so many wars, across so many continents, planets and timeframes, but I can't simply take a stroll around a city orf national park, taking photos and writing postcards as I go. I'm sure there are games about tourism but they're probably adventure games, or hidden object games. Something will be in the way of the pleasure of being in a place simply to be in that place. From Street View to The Crew, I'm looking for my next grand tour.
]]>I imagined Piazza San Marco and the Grand Canal when I heard Euro Truck Simulator 2 would add Venice in the next patch. Perhaps you'd drop film cannisters off at the Venice Film Festival, or communion wafers at St Mark's Basilica. ETS 2 and I romanticise different things. Its Venice is a city built around docks and industrial estates. It's a city for people to work in, not for tourists to visit. Roads, not canals. As someone not into Simulating, I'm charmed by this practical view.
If you'd like to drive past Venetian warehouses and breathe in Venetian fumes, you can have a peek as SCS Software have released an open beta build of patch 1.11.
]]>When Euro Truck Simulator 2 worked its way into my dreams, I hoped that it might be the first in a convoy of vehicular profession simulators. Sadly, OMSI aside, the so-called simulators that I've tried since have mostly mirrored John's experiences with Woodcutter Simulator 2013. I love the idea of performing tasks that don't involve guns death and destruction while journeying through a recreation of the real world, or something like it. The beauty of Euro Truck Simulator has little to do with the transportation of goods or business management - it's a game about driving and watching the world go by. That's why images of follow-up American Truck Simulator are as exciting as any stills I've seen this year. They're below.
]]>Adam and I are both avowed truck lovers, but thanks to the Euro Truck Simulator 2 Multiplayer Mod we can now pull our big rigs into the same roadside service station for a late night liaison. The mod has been in-development since late last year and entered open alpha yesterday.
]]>I tried not to post this, but I can't help myself. Even as I get my paws on one multiplayer retrofit with Just Cause 2's multiplayer mod, another appears on the horizon. I'm going to be stalking the Euro Truck Simulator 2 multiplayer mod until it gets released. Come and watch the development video below for some hot convoy action.
]]>I like Euro Truck Simulator 2 more with each passing day. Last time, it was because the game now has Oculus Rift support. This time, it's because developers SCS Software have re-invested the profits from some recent DLC back into the game. By recording cars smashing into one another from great heights.
Check out the video of this week's sound recording session below.
]]>I've used the Oculus Rift to fight Half-Life 2's Combine, to blast through space in EVR, and to stomp around in Hawken's powerful mechs, but this was the thing I'd really been waiting for. SCS Software just released the Oculus Rift-enabled beta for Euro Truck Simulator 2, and I celebrated by driving from Cardiff to Southampton.
]]>The Flare Path turns two this week. Here in the UK that means it can legally hunt gruffalo, attend public hangings, and teach John Prine lyrics to mynah birds. To mark the occasion there’ll be no news items or inscrutable intros today. The entire column will consist of quizzes. Napping fitfully beyond the break are five fuzzy-eared Foxers, each with a rather special set of prizes tied to its brush.
]]>Site policy: we don't run news about competitions in other places.
Today, I must break site policy. Because today there is a videogames competition that has nothing to do with us, but wherein the prize is to become a fully qualified HGV driver.
!
]]>Manchester to Sheffield, Sheffield to Swansea, Swansea to Stuttgart. I’ve been haunting the highways and low roads of Europe as I aim to build a freight empire the likes of which the world has never seen before. My convoys will convey powdered milk from Berlin to Paris, and machine parts from Edinburgh to Frankfurt. Or, failing that, I’ll just fill my playlist with electronic ambience and watch the world roll past the window. This is Euro Truck Simulator 2.
]]>Enough.
The lying, the self-justification, the sleepless nights... it all stops here.
What follows is the story of a games journalist who touched pitch and was defiled. The confessions of a fool who, having strayed far from the path of probity, is now desperately trying to find a way back. Judge him if you must. Forgive him if you can.
]]>This edition of Flare Path is dedicated to Gerda Hampson, the SOE agent known as 'Hawk Moth' who on June 22nd 1942, charmed her way into The Berghof posing as a Swiss entomologist, and surreptitiously changed Hitler's personal difficulty setting from 'easy' to 'ironman'. The sly switch wasn't discovered for two and a half years by which time, of course, there was no way back for the red-faced Führer.
]]>The Flare Path thought he knew almost everything about Operation Overlord, but this week he read something in a book by Max Hastings, that left him flabbergasted. Apparently, in the weeks leading up to D-Day, instead of training, the Axis troops manning the Atlantic Wall spent most of their time planting Rommel's asparagus. Max didn't go into detail, but obviously the famous Generalfeldmarschall was either extremely partial to the speary vegetable, or - and this seems more likely - he was using Heer manpower in some sort of massive market-gardening scam. Was it Berlin's discovery of this illicit project that caused the Desert Fox to take his own life in October '44? The official histories say 'no', but FP was sorely tempted to postpone coverage of Conflict of Heroes: Awakening the Bear (a new Matrix wargame) and Accu-Feel (a gizmo from A2A that looks set to revolutionise FSX) and use this week's column to thoroughly examine the matter.
]]>It's dawn and it's raining cats and dogs. You are barrelling down the M3 in your uninsured Vauxhall Inquisitor when you see a huddled figure, arm outstretched, standing by the roadside. The figure is holding a scrap of cardboard scrawled with the words EURO TRUCK SIMULATOR 2, RIGS OF RODS, and BATTLE OF BRITAIN 2. You can stop and pick-up this drenched wayfarer (Click where it says 'Read the rest of this entry') knowing that his conversation might turn out to be as soggy as his sign, or you can speed past, purposely averting your gaze from those pleading puppy-dog eyes. Which is it to be?
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