Right well I thought I may as well do a review having done a little tiny review at the start I thought I may as well do a full depth review on how I personally feel about this game and everyone is perfectly allowed to disagree or agree with me but this is my full 100% honest opinion on the game. Also when it’s uploaded I will put a video up of the gameplay on the Deliveries ‘Free Roam’ map. And considering most of my write ups are usually on trucks I thought I’d give a go with Truck Simulators….how hard could it be? :D Lol
To start with my first ever experience of a truck simulator was back when I was around 12/13 and I think 18 wheels of steel pedal to the metal had only just been released and I think i’m right in saying that Pedal to the metal is arguably one of the best simulators ever built especially when it comes to truck simulators then again I could be biased because of it being the first ever truck sim I went on :P? From then on we all got further american truck sims like the unpopular convoy to the very popular haulin and the last of the 18 WOS Series being the Extreme Trucker series which is a little on the you either like it or hate it kind of game in my opinion I didn’t necessarily dis-like it but it certainly wasn’t my favourite simulator although I have to admit driving at 90+ mph on the ice was pretty damn cool and saving yourself from falling through the ice even funnier :P!
And then SCS Software started bringing out the European truck simulators (Granted ETS came out before the ET series but thinking out of the box here!) which came to a very big like to us European guys considering we felt a little left out! (I Certainly did!) Again a very big success with the trucking sim community which seems to be growing if I’m not mistaken! Although with every truck simulator it seemed to be with every simulator especially with the likes of Euro Truck simulator and 18 Wheels of Steel Haulin the one big problem everyone seemed to find is the trucks physics & Handling with the feeling of handling a ‘car’ or in ETS’s case going round a corner felt like a go cart! And well this is where I’m going to make my start on the new truck simulator Scania Truck Driver Simulator or STS to me and you
Well I would like to think I was one of the first to buy this…I stayed up until my £200 check cleared from the tax office 1am this morning to buy it (Is that normal….or a little bit crazy….you can decide!) And well the nice feature I found with this game was you didn’t just have a 30 - 60 minute demo like all other SCS games seem to have but instead having some of the features ‘locked’ so you still get a feel of the game to see if you like it or not.
The first thing I personally noticed when I started the demo was the steering! I mean wow not like it used to be when the wheel would take a matter of seconds to turn but a much slower turn to the wheel which I found a nice relief as you just knew you wouldn’t be steering a go kart but a truck. When I turned over the engine to bring ‘my’ Scania to life it wasn’t the sound of a made up truck engine which sounded more like a sewing machine in overdrive but it actually sounded like a Scania! Not a V8 Scania unfortunately but nevertheless a Scania engine did appear! When I first set off in the Scania a nice sound of the engine indeed although I would say it needed tweaking just a little bit as it didn’t completely like any of the Scanias I’ve been in but 95% there even down to the gear changes with the little air noises and the noise of the turbo working your way up the revs which is a very nice change from previous games.
Turning corners and going over bumps…Well turning corners is a hell of a lot better than the previous games with no longer sliding around although it would be a greater help if the steering responded a little quicker instead of the tortoise like turning which you get used to but if your using a keyboard like I am for the time being it’s something you’ll get used to and be able to ‘prepare’ for corners better. Going over bumps well as seen in the trailers of ETS2 & STS you can see the cab moves with the bumps as do the axles on the truck it’s same with braking the cab rolls back & forth although not enough to say you’ve been Rick Roll’d…. The different features this game has well the fact you can choose to do different challenges or if you want to roam freely on the two maps provided which I’m hoping SCS include a couple more maps in the future as I believe it would be nice to have a little more choice but even if they don’t it’s still nice to be able to not have to do challenges all the time when you go onto the game….In fact I’ve spent 99% of my time on the free roam maps than the challenges themselves ahah! Although I’m sure I’ll give the challenges a go :)
Other features like being able to have your side lights on or being able to ‘flash’ at people with your headlights although sounding a bit wrong in my head its a great feature if your on a dark road but don’t want to be switching on your main beams on and off all the time but being able to just quickly glance as aswell with the main beams being on a seperate switch makes things a little better as like in real life you would control a seperate switch for the main beams instead of them being on the light switch etc so a nice feature for sure!
Also not being able to go above 90/91 km/h as you would in the real world of having your truck limited although it would be a nice feature if SCS could have an option to have this on or off but it would be nice if when reaching the ‘limited’ speed that the truck just didn’t suddenly sound gutless and having no power as I’ve never known any truck to do this before but again it’s something you get used to and if you do like I do slow down a little and put more power on so you hear that sweet engine pull like a train…accelerating in the truck is no longer like it was in haulin or GTS and I’m sure people will know what I mean when I say it’s no longer like you’re either putting on too much power or there isn’t enough there like if you picked a too low a gear the power would be instant etc and you would have to change up 2/3 gears at a time, I’ve found even if you change up 1 gear at a time the truck seems to have enough power but not too much so another great job SCS!!
Now to some of my ‘dis-likes’ of this game or somethings I need to be improved I have mentioned above but I will mention again.
First is something I think is a big disappointment and that’s the fact SCS only included the new R Series Scania for this game when if I am right in saying this game is supposed to be a Scania simulator, in my opinion they should have included a few models of the Scania like the 4/3 series Scania or even if they included the G & P Series Scanias it would be a nice thing to have that choice and not be dictated to what truck we drive but that’s my personal opinion on this but it’s like with any driving game I find that companies only include the newest cars yet sometimes I want to be able to drive the older series stuff you know the stuff I grew up around (Even if they were crap :P Lol!)
Second is the steering as I already mentioned above it could be a little better for going round corners being a little quicker and ‘responsive’ but other than that that’s my only gripe about it!
Third would be for the sounds of the engine to be altered just a little bit so we don’t here slight sewing machine noises etc when driving at top revs as I’ve never known a Scania to sound like one yet! But nothing is ever perfect and as when hitting the limiter it would be nice to still have the feeling/sound of ‘power’ even though we’re on the limiter and not just cut out instantly when it hits the limiter.
And the last I know some people will complain about although I think this would be best solved by adding a ‘clutch’ button for people who use keyboards etc like Rig ‘n’ Roll brought in for using the manual gearbox for changing gears up & down to stop the truck wandering back into neutral as it is VERY annoying when I’m reversing into a space and half way in the truck decides it doesn’t want to reverse anymore but wants to rev the boobs out of the engine instead as I think this would make the game a little better using the manual gearbox on the keyboard etc or assuming it’s like this with steering wheels as well again it should be implemented in this and especially future games!
So over all I would like to say that SCS Software did a fabulous job of this game. They have solved a lot of the truck sim community’s gripes with previous games such as dodgy steering, brakes being terrible, acceleration being as good as a chocolate fire guard. Graphics wise this game looks fantastic and even though it looks the mutts nuts it’s not so demanding of the graphics card well at least in my case it isn’t as I am able to play at highest settings and still manage to get on average 40 - 60 FPS although I will return to this when I get my computer hooked up to 2 - 3 monitors depending if they can fit on my desk! But that’s another story for another day. So my marks out of 10 for this game, although I do think this is an amazing game I believe it is only deserving of 8/10 for me as for me I was let down most of all with the lack of choice of truck as if I am playing a Scania truck simulator I would like more choice of Scania than the new R series which sounds a little trivial but to me it makes all the difference between an 8/10 game to being a 10/10 game.
And to give an idea to people what this game was running on my computer spec is thus:
InWIN BLACK DRAGON RIDER GAMING CASE
AMD BULLDOZER SIX CORE FX-6100
ASUS® SABERTOOTH 990FX - TUF SERIES MILITARY GRADE MOTHERBOARD
8GB KINGSTON HYPERX GENESIS DUAL-DDR3 1866MHz X.M.P
2GB AMD RADEON™ HD7870 - DVI,HDMI,2 mDP - DX® 11, Eyefinity 4 Capable
750GB WD CAVIAR BLACK WD7502AAEX, SATA 6 Gb/s, 64MB CACHE
1TB 3.5” SATA-III 6GB/s HDD 32MB CACHE
24x DUAL LAYER DVD WRITER
CORSAIR 650W ENTHUSIAST SERIES™ TX650 V2-80 PLUS® BRONZE
COOLIT ECO II A.L.C ADVANCED LIQUID COOLER
(Price including extras e.g Keyboard, sound system £1350)
And as above I run this game at the highest settings getting between 40 - 60 FPS even when recording using fraps! So to finish this off to ask if I would recommend this game to people well I definitely would and I demand people go out and buy this game to help support SCS Software make more truck sims!
Cheers
Jonny
Disclaimer - To make this clear I was not asked by SCS Software or Scania to write any of this, this was purely 100% my own opinion and my opinion only….although if SCS or Scania would like to pay me for this I would not say no :P Lol just kidding. But I hope people who’re wondering if to or not buy this game I hope this helps :)!
