The Greatest Trucking Game & Sim Combo I’ve Ever Played!

I have a 21.5-inch iMac, Late 2012, 3.1 GHz Intel Core i7, 16 GB 1600 MHz DDR3, NVIDIA GeForce GT 650M 512 MB, 1 TB Fusion Drive, running 10.10

Buckle up for the most hyper realistic semi truck simulator you’ll see in a good long while!

EYES
The modeling, lighting, animation, & physics are outstanding. The truck itself is a sight to behold. Every detail inside and out has been accounted for. When you’re driving with your view set behind the wheel you get to see all the instrument panel gauges functioning properly. You can look around in your cab or into your mirrors and even lean out your door to see behind when backing up. There are other views as well such as third person aerial views to assist you when trying to hitch up a trailer or deliver cargo into a loading dock. The surrounding environments complement the already fun driving experience. Varied realistic situations ranging from city buildings, construction debris, concert venues, disaster zones, flooded areas, mountainous terrain, snowy passes, rainy highways, grassy country sides, obstacle courses, resource limits like fuel and tiredness, and of course other traffic make this sim really hit the mark. Look out the windshield to see individual rain drops splattering and smudging away as your wipers turn on. If you’re looking for a performance comparison, my system runs this game at 1920x1080 at the ‘Medium’ preset smoothly which means some graphics options like Depth of Field, Sunshafts, High Dynamic Range, Color Enhancements, Texture Quality, Weather Quality, Mirror Quality, Anisotropic Filtering, Pedestrians, Traffic, and Other Vehicle Headlights are turned on or up and some graphics options like Antialiasing, Reflection Quality, Shadow Quality, Vegetation Quality, Mirror Distance, and Lights Visibility Range are turned off or down. The ‘High’ graphics preset is a bit too much for my system but it’s really alright because ‘Medium’ already looks pretty fantastic.

EARS
Motor noises in driving games can make or break the experience since they’re almost always present. Thankfully, SCS Software took the time to engineer some very pleasing and well balanced rumbles. The truck engine hums and roars with delightfully tuned precision. It mixes superbly with the ambient sounds of the world. The instrument panel dings and warning chimes are probably straight out of the actual real life model. All in all, the sound design is excellent.

HANDS
As with most steering games I feel this game is best played with a joystick as it allows for natural, smooth turning and eliminates the annoying need to rapidly tap the left and right keys to turn. I mapped my favorite in-game functions to my PS3 controller. It has just enough buttons to get everything you’ll need on it. Like many 3D games this game has separate looking and steering controls which makes the double joysticks on the controller just perfect. It’ll take a bit of practice to simultaneously turn, check mirrors, brake, signal left or right, crank wipers, change radio stations, flash headlights, and honk at that annoying car beside you but luckily this game is all about practicing and testing through specific objective courses and also free roam.

SUMMARY
If you’re a lover of cars, trucks, semi trucks, trailers, precision driving, route planning, freight ferrying, and anything over seventeen wheels — I wholly recommend getting this! I started off with Euro Truck Simulator’ to get my feet wet. It was so amazing it made me want this game. Euro Truck Simulator has multiple trucks to buy and a massively giant world to explore with routes galore. You can start anywhere and take whichever jobs you want. You get to strategize and plan out your delivery schedule down to the last rest stop. It’s a trucker’s dream and for an obsessively meticulous person like me, it’s paradise.

DaftPuzzler about Scania Truck Driving Simulator