As stiff as a bus going through turns 12 and 13 at Circuit Gilles Villeneuve, the trucks of Alaskan Road Truckers are not what you are used to in many other truck sims. I’ve had less understeer in boats, and the last time I was actually on one of those, my guts went to the bottom of the sea. I think the depth that Road Studio S.A. aims for results in a game that is quite literally understeering past having a solid core to build its highly advertised additions to the trucking sim genre around.

I’ve previously covered Alaskan Road Truckers, and one of its big selling points was that the trucks weren’t the stars, you are. Aiming directly at SCS’ large market share in the genre, this time you can get out of the cab and smell the snow, the petrol fumes, feltleaf willows, and Sarah Palin, I guess. The big selling point is that open nature to this world, allowing you to live the life of a trucker instead of feeling somewhat disconnected from the world as you turn the steering wheel for the billionth time going down the same highways.

As a concept, the life-sim aspect should work, and there are some portions that do somewhat well enough, but at what cost? There have been a rapid number of patches since release, more so than some other titles, but I think rapid patches post-release don’t address what’s questionable about the core. Being a truck sim, the core gameplay is the driving which isn’t very sim-ish. It is understeer-y without the weight, the controls feel clumsy, and using a wheel and peddles made me want to strangle whoever programmed it. I’ve had bugs where the throttle would become the brake and vice versa, which is the least of my worries.

Put on top of this lackluster driving core is a survival-lite system that aims to bring a sense of realism (without the grit) to trucking. There is also a skill-based system that limits some of those aspects and opens up other portions too: Select jobs require specific licenses and you can limit the need for food or the cost of fuel. Too much caffeine gives you a sore head and other effects impact you as a player, but ultimately what do they do? I’d argue that they distract from the central portion of your gameplay to be a gimmick more than an expansion of the enjoyable playtime.

Don’t get me wrong, once you’ve taken your head out of this idea that it must be the same as SCS’ Euro Truck or American Truck, you can enjoy Alaskan Road Truckers. Though very quickly the AI gets on your nerves, the constant tutorial prompts stay despite ignoring them, and quite a few other issues persist. Honestly, with the rate Road Studio keeps pumping out patches with a large number of fixes, I have no idea what state the game will be in when this review comes out. If I mention something that is patched, at least Alaskan Road Truckers is moving in the right direction, but it is a little late to do so.

I mentioned AI as that’s quite a large portion of driving sims. You have to battle traffic as you are on a deadline, fuel is running low, there are roadblocks that only you can fix, and so on. The reason I have an issue with the AI is quite simple, they went to an American school of mum and dad at the age of 15, so they could drive 600 miles to a concert out of state. The trouble is that everyone is driving at 30 in a 55 and stopping at every intersection, which has a 15-mile-per-hour limit right before. I feel like Lewis Black shouting into the void, but use common sense!

A speed limit isn’t just the maximum limit, it is also the suggested speed for that section of road. Going 30 while everyone else is going 55 like a human with a brain means that their breaking distance is right up Uranus. Actively stopping at every intersection (including those you are not taking) means you will resemble flying mince stuck to my broken radiator by the time I’ve stopped. I get being cautious and driving around 5 miles under the limit, but 25? I hope you are on good terms with Jesus.

I’m not talking about Winter conditions or dirt roads. I’m talking about paved highways and Summer days as bright and wonderful as can be. Lovely days to go on a 1K drive from Valdez to Prudhoe Bay, listening to the licensed radio soundtrack full of songs you probably don’t know. I say lovely days, but I have had performance issues consistently, resulting in some jitteriness alongside the “dated” graphical style. I say this as my setup meets and exceeds the recommended hardware. There were also some crashes that only occurred prior to patch number 7.

It didn’t really matter what graphical settings were used, even with some horrible DLSS graining up the (shall we say) uninspired art direction. Sometimes I’d see 60 in the little counter or dips to the mid-50s, but most of the time it was a consistent mid-40s as I trundled down every road, knowing exactly where the loading of the map would come. Worst of all though is that despite meeting the recommended specs, I’d also see sub-30 frame rates at times. The few times I tried DLSS to sedate ailing frame rates, it was still 45 for me.

I’ve said the art direction is “uninspired” and quoted that it is “dated.” While the latter is somewhat true, those of us who’ve played mid-00s 18 Wheels of Steel titles might want to disagree. I will say that the truck interiors feel flat, as the speedometer and other gauges often do very little. I also don’t think there is much that could be said for other portions like stores (aside from the freezers). The world itself isn’t much better. The roads don’t look or feel bumpy or slidey before you go off into the vegetation that appears in higher graphical settings.

Licensed music was mentioned, and while I don’t understand the choices personally, I understand why they were chosen. I still think it is odd to have young people’s music as the focus when I’d call a trucking sim a dad game. It is something “mundane” to play while thinking about stuff and clocking out. Show me a typical trucker who wants to listen to Lewis Capaldi have a melancholy worble. Power to you if you do, but despite Taylor Swift, Dua Lipa, and FIFTY FIFTY being some of my recent listens, I don’t think Busted’s “Crashed The Wedding” being ruined by All Time Low fits.

More importantly, I’ve just made a good case for why it was a partially wasted budget and ruined future editorials on licensed soundtracks: We all have access to music streaming platforms. If I want to listen to Green Day’s Warning, ELO’s Discovery, Love’s Four Sail, or heaven forbid seven billion other albums, they are right there. An even greater point is that you can listen to the conspiracy theories on Bovril, Argentina and how Randy Poffo is a patriot cruise missile disguised as a washing machine. Don’t come in here criticizing my podcast-listening desires, if I want to listen to weird stuff, I’ll do it.

I think after Kingdom Come: Deliverance we all agree that limited save systems can climb in the bin. Alaskan Road Truckers doesn’t put your saves behind an in-game paywall traded for with tuppence. In fact, there is a heavy auto save system and saving on exit too, but the trouble is loading. Every auto-save does so over the previous one, which makes sense, but while transporting a load some short distance you’ll be limited to one save via your log sheet and 2 if it is a long-distance journey. My question is, well it is a log sheet, why is that limited to X number of saves?

Being someone who has driven the circumference of the Earth in games (maybe 12 times over), in F1 cars, road cars, rally cars, or trucks, I’m not one that is prone to an accident, even at high speed. Nonetheless, I’d like to save some time and be able to select where I load in, especially in the event that a game crashes several times as it did at that odd highway roundabout a little bit south of Palmer. That crashing is fixed now as far as I can tell, but it is still annoying to have this auto-save and limited-only system in place. I just don’t get who it is for or its purpose.

There are ideas and interesting concepts that give Alaskan Road Truckers something unique. However, in a genre that has been standardized as something with a solid foundation, that uniqueness and roughness can be disappointing. Maybe I’ve Stockholm Syndrome’d myself into enjoying it where I have, but I think there is a base there to enjoy. That said, when I have found challenge and/or danger in my experience, it has been as a result of poor arcadey handling that is difficult to predict, nonsensical driving from the AI just looking for an insurance claim, and a bit of bugginess.

Menus and options feel like an afterthought, left with very little thought of their utility to the player. The map screen is a good example. Once zoomed in it feels a bit grainy and difficult to pinpoint exactly where everything is under the many Ubisoft-like map markers which keep resetting every time. Not to mention, setting waypoints to jobs leads to another menu that is the same map with slightly fewer markers but in built-up areas, it is still messy.

The options menu itself is about as useful as windscreen wipers on a Little Tikes Cozy Coupe. Not only does it often reset the DLSS and depending on the update made about as much sense as a politician in a multicultural neighborhood trying not to offend people around December, but it is annoying too. What use do I have to a gearbox mode option and button mapping for a splitter and range switch when the little graphic showing the gear, range, and if I’m using the splitter or not disappears after a short while? Yes, it is a sim, but I’m absentmindedly playing it while hearing about Davey Boy Smith’s restaurant exploits.

Alaskan Road Truckers is something I enjoy, though as I’ve said it does bog itself down with what are supposed to be features. One feature is the level-up tree/tech tree, which is in three branches: Personality, Trucking, and Mechanical. Trucking and personality seem to tick along passively (as well as completing jobs) as you play. Driving procures XP for trucking and all the life-sim aspects for Personality. Ticking along at a much slower rate, for every three to four levels accrued in the other two, Mechanical is probably the one you want the most. It lets you upgrade your HQ, for all the use it has.

Ultimately, I’ve enjoyed hopping out of the truck, locking the pin, lifting the gear, hooking up the trailer, hopping back in, and going off to become one of the Alaskan Road Truckers. Nonetheless, its lack of polish and plug-n-play attitude can be off-putting in comparison to the rest of the genre. Where American and Euro Truck have a meditative feeling surrounding them, trucking through Alaska in the sun, rain, and snow feels just a little bit different. It is still meditative and enjoyable if you look past the traffic crawling along and several visual glitches, but nothing I’d say that is toppling the experiences you already have.

A PC review copy of Alaskan Road Truckers was provided by Green Man Gaming Publishing for the purposes of this review.

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Alaskan Road Truckers

$21.99

6.5

Score

6.5/10

Pros

• An interesting concept, even if slightly fumbled.
• The licensed music provides something different.

Cons

• AI drivers went to stupid school.
• Performance.
• The driving can feel arcade-y at times.
• Limited saves.