American Truck Simulator – Free as the Wind

Overview

American Truck Simulator is an open world, trucking simulator game released February 2, 2016 on Steam. The game was developed and published SCS Software.

Graphics

American Truck Simulator uses an in house game engine called Prism3D. The same engine used on Euro Truck Simulator 2, another SCS Software game released back in 2012. The game offers a good amount of graphical options like Textures, Shadow Quality, Mirror Quality, Antialisaling etc. which you can set based on your PC hardware. The Hardware requirements are pretty light with the minimum being Dual Core CPU 2.4GHz, Nvidia GTX450/Intel HD 4000, and 4GB RAM.

The graphics looks good. A good amount of detail is put in to the landscape, cities, vehicles, and trucks.
Especially the trucks you own, which have highly detailed interiors and exteriors. The truck models are licensed from iconic truck manufacturers. The landscape and cities look beautiful, a lot of attention to detail was put into the environments, such as the forest and mountains of the pacific northwest to the deserts of the southwest, and then the plains just off the foot of the rocky mountains. You also have a lot of major cities and iconic landmarks you can travel to in the game. Seattle, San Francisco, and Salt Lake City are my favorite because they have the most detail put into to them. The game was nice weather effects and lighting.

Sound

American Truck Simulator did a fantastic job on the games sound effects. The game only has one original sound track that plays in the game menus. The trucks you drive sound great, different from each other based on engines they use from their respective manufacturers. An example of which a Volvo truck is a bit more quiet especially with braking and engine braking, where Kenworth trucks are loud. The ambient sounds in the game give the environment a more natural feel, while in the city you can hear distant traffic, and police sirens every now and, to bird chirping and crickets in more rural areas of the map.

As said before, the game only has one original sound track, but you have a radio player in the game. Radio Player has two built in radio modes, Music that can be played from your mp3/ogg files on your pc, or streaming music from websites. I have never used the radio player mostly because I listen to music on spotify while playing the game.

Addictiveness

This game is fairly addictive. I have poured a good chunk of playtime into the game. You do have an endless amount of delivery jobs you can do. You have a very large open world map to explore. You can freely explore all part of the map if you like. Visit Landmarks and scenery towns. Expand your trucking company buy earning millions, even billions if you're really dedicated. After that, there is not much replayablilty outside of just doing deliveries whenever you feel like, and just want to have a relaxing long haul. SCS Software does release new state maps yearly, enough to keep you into the game.

Story

American Truck Simulator doesn't have a story. Pretty normal for the simulation genre. The game mostly focuses on you building up your trucking company.

Depth

The game might not seem like much on the surface, it does offer a lot of content. While you're mostly driving from point A to point B doing deliveries the game offers 100s of different types of deliveries from various fictional companies. You can take jobs as a trucker for hire or use your own truck and trailer. Some of these jobs will require a powerful truck especially special transport. You also have a skill system in place that you require to level up in order take on longer, more valuable delivers.

You do have a large amount of potions on how you want to play the games. Have the option to change weather probability, road incidents, and detours. Every trip you make might not be as straight forward, some detours can be minor, all you have to do is get back on the highway from an exit a few miles away, or major, driving several miles through slower rural roads.

Your trucks and your company are highly customizable, allowing you to drive any kind of truck you want, and how ever you want them to look. Your companies name and logo can be changed anytime you want. You can hire people to work for your trucking company, and they can help earn you more money in the game. Just be sure to give them a truck.

Lastly, the world. The game at its current state takes place in the west coast of the U.S. With the last few State DLC's now reaching the Midwest with the next DLC being Oklahoma. The world is pretty vast, it can take up to an hour in real life to get from one edge to the other. The cities and landscape have been amazingly done and are pretty close to their real life counterparts. American Truck Simulator does feature a lot of landmarks as well.

Difficulty

American Truck Simulator is not a really difficulty, but this is only if you play on the default setting. Difficulty in the game is based heavily on your play style. There are a few settings that change your gameplay and truck settings. A few examples for gameplay are fatigue simulation, traffic offenses etc. While for truck settings, you can change how you control your truck. Default settings just allows you drive your truck like any video game with simple driving mechanics. If you want more of a challenge or have knowledge of how to drive a truck you can change the settings to allow to give you more realistic control of your truck.

Overall

American Truck Simulator gets a good 9/10 from me. Its one of the only few good trucking simulator games out there. The other being Euro Truck Simulator, they're pretty much the same game, just based in another continent. This game does everything right for a trucking game, and is a must play for trucking enthusiasts or someone who just enjoy simulators in general.