The point that made me stop playing Euro Truck Simulator 2 last time, as I do intermittently hop back into my truck, was the point I began to search for online radio stations in-game. At that point, I had to stop because it was becoming too real. I might as well have given up my day job of writing nonsense and hopped into that seat for real, though I’m sure there is some kind of law against that, given the number of people I’ve driven through in GTA. Even so, I’m scared I qualify for a license simply because all you have to do is change gear, change gear, check your mirrors, kill a prostitute, and change gear.

I dove back into the European trucking scene recently simply because I felt like it. I have a proper steering wheel, pedals, and gear stick to make it a little more realistic. What I discovered to be inconceivably uncomfortable was how it felt like climbing into your cozy pair of slippers after a long day. Knowing people close to me who’ve driven and done heavy-duty work like trucking, who find the articulation and reversing business an unthinkably difficult task, it scares me how natural it feels to do it. As I said several moons ago when I reviewed 18 Wheels of Steel: Haulin’, I’ve been playing SCS Software’s games for nearly two decades.

While I do have that history behind me, I believe this was the first time I’ve had the proper nice feeling wheel to get uncomfortably… Well, comfortable. I maintain stating there is discomfort, and it is true, but that’s specifically because I usually drive the wheels off of everything like I stole it, yet not here. I’ve gone on about the wheel and such, I’ll get back to that soon enough, and I do so as a result of playing with all three options of controls: The binary of a keyboard, the more dynamic nature of an Xbox One controller, and now my second or third wheel. We’ve all tested those cheap-old PS2 wheels we have in some cupboard or attic.

All three have very different sensations to them. With the keyboard it is swearing and violence, the controller option offers a more casual but intermediate experience, and the wheel pairs well with a good podcast, a radio station, playlist, or audiobook. It will be easy for you to go missing while driving across Europe. They are all dramatically different, yet with every one of them, I’ve come away with the same feeling. I’m home. If I just want to sod off to deliver turnips or vaccines to Daugavpils, Latvija from Aberdeen, I can. No amount of anti-5G protesting can stop me.

Euro Truck Simulator 2 feels like home simply because it is both a fantastic game but also a wonderful and very much alive simulator. You can see where the stitches are bleeding a little and the craft-store glue isn’t sticking too well. However, it all feels so right matched with the outstanding trek across continental Europe and the UK and seeing all the minute differences. In a stark contrast between the initial release back in 2012 and now, almost a decade later, nearly every detail is more refined or expanded upon. It is captured with wonderful scenery, a pressing desire to expand your trucking empire, and ultimately one of the most important parts, trucker culture.

Every truck you’ve got in your head when you think of one is either the U.S.-style Kenworth Peterbilt or something dressed up that is unforgettable. Trucking culture is built on a form of classism and prestige. In Europe, it is all about the Scania and it is about how your dress it. Every bit of it from paint, accessories, badges, and lights all attempt to scream just how flashy and individual you are. A little flag above your door waving in the wind, or a simple little compass on the dash, creates a sense that it is your truck, the one you feel most comfortable in. Any other would just feel impure.

While the initial release had reasonably limited customization features, with all the DLC from a decade of development and general updates, there is so much more to do. From hardcore PC Gamer magazines about Black Holes on the passenger seat, a kit bag, or a blanket and pillow, the whole thing comes together more. Alongside your trucking empire built from that very seat and a couple of heavy loans looming over you, you can go a little further now. Instead of just offering the units to transport goods, you can buy trailers and become the entire haulage industry now. There are equally maddening customization details available for those too.

The only thing missing is the offer to do a mediocre TV deal for a reality/documentary show about your company. As the management side is somewhat shallow, it allows you the time to focus on what is important: haulin’ and making money. Euro Truck Simulator 2 isn’t a hard game. As long as you deliver your beans on time and get that tank to Poland sooner rather than later, you’ll progress fair enough. Where the difficulty comes in is often your own impatience, specifically the desire to get your own truck and other drivers making you money instead of working for others. This forces you into the bank loan side of the game.

Personally, I think the balance of it is tilted in your favor, especially if you hate the faux-fatigue simulation in-game. Turn that off and you’ll make 90K every third day, while the top loans only ask you to make 5K a day plus your profits. The profits themselves go into upgrading your truck, upgrading the business, and when the AI feels like being sworn at in German at 3 AM on the motorway while I blast the air horn, repairs. If there was one thing I’d do to make it more difficult it would be to bump up the traffic to create a jam from time to time. Nothing impenetrable, but a slider just to emulate that sense of dread as delivery times tick on.

Maybe even something to make the business simulation a little more difficult, with drivers themselves leaving of their own accord. A majority of the time, everything is surface-level from that sense of the simulation. Where I think the difficulty is inflated to keep you on your toes is the actual driving. I’m specifically talking about the rules of the road, and the need to pull over and go through several checkpoints when you accidentally drive through Kaliningrad. It is creepy going through the former USSR with the only upside being the 0.43p fuel prices sending you all the way to Germany on tuppence.

Of course, this is where a majority of other European truckers will yell about mods, to which there are lots of lovely and scary creatures making them. Mods can help your desire to drive all the way to North Korea (if you are mental) or putting all the proper logos on companies and trailers. Alternately, you could haul military gear from Nato countries to the edge of Poland, for some reason. There is nearly a mod for everything, and I genuinely love that because it shows how lovely the community is and shows their appetite to expand the game with intriguing concepts. Some of which became part of the base game.

What put me in the mind of a trucker was the moment that had me almost pressing the “get out of the truck and beat an Italian cop to death with a tire iron” button. AI can be a little off, as anyone who’s driven behind a bus can tell you. Sometimes everyone flows nicely and moves along as happy as my mate Larry, but then you get someone stopped for two minutes at either the traffic lights or the trumpet feed-ins to get on the motorway/dual-carriageway. That’s when I use my air horn at 3 AM. Then you have the moment I had with officer Giuseppe.

There’s a big red truck with a bit of black at the top, you couldn’t miss it. There is a half-naked trucker Santa on the side, lit up like a Christmas tree with beacons, auxiliary lights, strobe lights, and all. The light just turned green at the traffic light, I’ve had enough time to pull out and get into fourth gear, so I’m a good way into making the left-hand turn in my left-hand truck. Then there is a thud on my right-hand side. How you miss a massive Scania dressed like a Christmas tree and driven by a psychopath as it pulls a 5-tonne yacht, I will never know. I’m sure my insurance company would love to though.

Going back to the psychopath thing, I’ve found myself almost roleplaying the little profile image you pick at the start. This time I opted for the woman that looks a bit like Stephen King in all his “about the author” pictures. She knows where all the dead women-of-the-night are buried. It is a novel thing to create an entire backstory based on a single uncustomizable image of a person and their occupation, you often do that sort of thing in something a bit more creative. I genuinely got into the character, even with my driving style or responses to receiving fines. Often with a hand gesture particularly offensive in thirteen micronations and six minor religions.

The true reason the driving felt uncomfortable is simply the fact that I don’t drive. Anything I have driven prior to this has been designed to go 200+ MPH. Though beyond the sore ankles due to holding my feet at a specific angle, the reason it all felt discomforting is how my hands moved around the wheel with ease. Soon enough, I understood the 520bhp under my right foot. You see it with teenagers when they learn to drive, they are often a bit stiff and have to be reminded of stupid rules before they are allowed to break them. Hands at 10 and 2, and all that.

Where these “skills” became the most pronounced was reversing. As I’ve said, I know people who find that unbelievably challenging for what it is, pushing something behind you. Where you should be the stiffest and tense as you back the cargo up, I’ve got one hand at the bottom of the wheel as I bounce my eyes between the mirror and hanging out of the cab. There was one delivery that sticks in my head above all else, and it was the moment I thought, “there are people with proper licenses that can’t do that.” It was one of the very urgent deliveries, and I had something like 50 in-game minutes left to do it.

I pulled up to the gate and saw the expert parking spot the game wanted this delivery: Under a canopy, beside the bins, backed right up to the warehouse building, behind a forklift at a jaunty angle, with no space for a u-turn. There was, however, a good spot to pull into the yard on my right and back the truck around the corner, avoiding the forklift and the trailer I would later take to Romania. Throughout all of this, I put the truck into gear, checked my mirrors, pulled out, changed gear again, changed into reverse after dropping from 4th gear, and all of that. All I could think was how effortlessly my hands were coping with this. They were copying everything I’d seen in the last 20 years, I’d learned how to drive through osmosis.

Even out on the motorway, coming up to check-points, and everywhere else, I had images in my head of the people I’d learned that placement of my hands from. It was every little tick and mannerism that stood out as I knew who they were from, such as the professional drivers around me and everyone I’ve been in a car with. In no way is this me saying, “I am a driving god!” because that would be stupid. Though for one delivery, because I was getting hungry but wanted to do one quick job, I turned off the speed limiter and traffic offenses, then did the WRC in a 30-tonne truck full of vaccines. I took a 4-hour delivery down to a 3-hour delivery, with zero cargo damage.

All of this amazement at my own ability to drive after decades of playing Burnout and anecdotal nonsense aside, at its core, Euro Truck Simulator 2 is the ultimate dad game. Shut off the noise of the kids, tell the world to go take a swivel on one of your fingers, and simply calmly drive across Eurasia. It is not the prettiest game, but what dads used to do instead of this was paint models of airplanes to escape PTSD, and that wasn’t pretty either. The DLCs aren’t the most well-optimized for low-end PCs or laptops you don’t want burning your lap to molten slag.

Euro Truck Simulator 2 is a beautiful game for all of that, even those few flaws I’ve mentioned. I’m not talking about beautiful because of some graphical options, I’m talking about the feeling, it feels right. I love any game that just feels right, such as Spider-Man 2, Burnout 3: Takedown, Sonic Mania, Shadow of the Colossus, Sniper Elite 5, Metal Gear Solid, and a few others. Including FTL: Faster Than Light, WWE 2K17, Grow Home, Tomb Raider III, God of War (2018), Black, Spec Ops: The Line, and Portal. Despite putting it among my top games of all time, I’d still change it because that’s what Euro Truck Simulator 2 is, a tinkerer’s game. Something malleable that always retains its core.

Ultimately, is Euro Truck Simulator 2 a game I’d recommend to just about anyone? Yes, but I still don’t think it is going to be everyone’s cup of tea. That’s the reason I describe it as the dad game. There’s no action to speak of and no explosiveness. It is a game to decompress to and Euro Truck Simulator 2 is magnificent at that. With a feeling that is oh so right, it is a hard one to beat given not only the community but the mountains of DLC and refinement SCS Software has given it. Though I would like to carpet bomb every toll booth from Norway down to Bulgaria and Turkey and all the way across to Portugal.

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Euro Truck Simulator 2 (PC)

9

Score

9.0/10

Pros

• The feel, just a wonderful feeling.
• Mods!
• Customizable trucks and trailers.

Cons

• Limited scope of simulation.