I am a boring man. Yes, the long hair, the beard, swearing, and musical instruments would give you the impression otherwise. That or I am just a crap Billy Connolly cosplayer, but I don’t think of myself as an interesting human. Some don’t even believe I am human at all. However, put aside the jokey-entertainer part of me that will shout “YAY, terrorism!” in a Red Faction: Guerrilla video and appropriately get clouted in the back of the head immediately as comeuppance. I like reading, sitting in silence, thinking about boring things in the shower, and all the boring human stuff.

I also oddly like traveling and trucks, I always have. It goes back to when I was young, spending most of my time on busses traveling, crossing about 70-120 miles a day (I think). You see so much doing that, and I got to do it when your imagination is still running wide. So, of course, my idea of trucking is somewhat idealistic and informed by that. In reality, knowing those that have and do drive trucks, it’s not all fun. Along with all this traveling that I did as a child, I’d also play a lot of SCS Software’s games: I still have several disk copies of all these games.

Well, it has been a year of lockdown, and only now have I bothered to install the 2006 game the precedes the developer’s latest American adventure. It should be noted, that between 2002 and 2007, SCS Software was getting these 18 Wheels of Steel games out yearly. The same cycle that EA uses for new FIFA games. The number of times I’ve driven from Los Angeles to New York in several of these games, you’d think I was a QA tester back when games couldn’t be updated daily. Yet I’ve never tired of it. Stick on a podcast, an episode (or two) of a TV show you can glance over at on a second monitor, or some music.

Not that we here at Phenixx Gaming condone watching tv and driving, it just makes it less boring than the same engine noise on a 1:32-ish scale map driving hundreds of miles. A good bit of wrestling or motor racing never hurt anyone, aside from that family hatchback I ran over in Texas that one time. If you don’t have something on, you’ll just get frustrated with yourself for little things. It is something to pull attention from your bad driving, alongside the dreadful AI which I could have sworn used to be smarter.

See, I’d been playing Haulin‘ and other 18 Wheels of Steel games for years, and generally, they were solid. Returning now, many years later, I don’t know if it is a processing issue or some code not working well with more modern systems. Several times I’ve seen trucks crash in ways that would make Austin Powers feel less embarrassed about his parking, and I’ve had moments where I am break-checked with Tonka toys. Call it a rose-tinted vision or call it whatever you like, I don’t remember this from years gone by.

Coming back after years away, it also graphically reminds me of returning to San Andreas after five years on the east coast. Not in a bad way, but in that, “and this is what games used to look like; Kids these days wouldn’t understand.” Way. For example, it has straight lines on the map turning into questionable curves in the game. There are also sections of the world that have clearly been nuked in this desolate wasteland of only cars filled with portly cardboard people that all look the same as each other. Give this to a kid now and they will moan about the graphics; Give it to a kid in the early to mid-2000s they will moan it is boring.

Yeah, you can’t be a real trucker: Change gear, change gear, kill a prostitute, change gear. It is a hard job, and I know I couldn’t do it. I’d go to change out the CD in the middle of the highway and kill 47 people and several animals while transporting nuclear waste. Yet, with SCS’ trucking sims, I’ve been able to explore that strangely boring aspect of my imagination. The side that’s interested in the transport/logistics, particularly, of entertainment pieces such as concert stages and equipment, or F1’s massive logistical nightmare. All of that is something my brain sits in awe of.

How is the driving? Well, it depends. Don’t even try to play any trucking sim with the keyboard, you will incur several million fines by cops stationed every few feet away. With a controller, you’ll enjoy it reasonably well. There are a lot of fiddly bits needing to be tweaked to make drifty controllers less lurchy. Finally, with wheels and peddles, that’s the intended way of playing, but you’ll be once again searching for the perfect linearity, sensitivity, and dead zones. It’s particularly frustrating returning after American Truck Sim and Euro Truck Sim 2, where it will show your inputs while setting up.

Forgive me for a failing memory on this, but I also remember one of the games allowing you to turn off the fatigue you’d incur from some driving. It’s not a bad thing to have, it can just a little bit annoying to either not hear or see the “YOU ARE TIRED, SLEEP NOW!” message, and then suddenly dip to black. That’s a great thing to have when you are transporting nuclear waste from Memphis to Phoenix, you only end up poisoning (or creating) the holy water in Texas. The number of times I’ve slammed on every brake in those moments, I’m surprised I still have brake pads left.

Speaking of surprise braking: Traffic lights are a nightmare when you start out. Unless you trundle along like a granny, sitting stock-upright, hands 10 and 2, and eyes straight ahead, you will be fined several kidneys and a brain for simply driving. Unless you immediately upgrade your truck to have ABS, you are screwed. It is like braking on ice. This is only made worse when you are up in Canada, and it’s snowing. It isn’t drastic, but there is either a slight change in how you drive or it is psychological/placebo.

Though some of these things I might moan about are bogies flicked at a brick wall, there is nothing much to them. However, for the love of all that is holy in a sock, the field of view is vomit-inducing. SCS are oddly PC exclusive with their releases, which is fine. However, you’d think after almost 10-years in the game at this point, you’d learn PC players are closer to their screens thus need a greater field of view. To explain to those in the back who just aren’t getting it. Think of looking out a window; When you are further away from it you can see less, so it is fine to have a small FOV, but when you are very close you should be able to see more. When you can’t do the latter, your brain starts feeling funny.

Call it nostalgia or call me a weirdly boring man, but I love the trucking sim games, and I was here before all the YouTubers got onto it. By god, I am will here when they are all gone; Probably on their private yacht with a cabin shaped like a Peterbilt. They are a bit buggy, a little bit bare in places, and not the best looking, but it is still fun when you get down to it. Just another part of the legacy of two of the best truck sims available right now.

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18 Wheels of Steel: Haulin'

$9.99

7

Score

7.0/10

Pros

• Great big truckin' adventures.
• A brilliant sense of scale.

Cons

• FOV is none existent.
• Aged poorly graphically.
• May be quite buggy.