Recensioni dei giochi

To really highlight the absurdity, just look at the core gameplay loop: you pick a job from a list, hitch up your cargo, and then slowly trundle toward your destination while obeying speed limits and road laws, spending most of your time on vast highways and endless stretches of asphalt. After 20 to 30 real-time minutes of this, you drop off the cargo. And then do it all over again.

Suffice to say, this isn't for everyone. There's a good chance some of you fell asleep just reading that last paragraph. And if you actually make it to the point of booting up the game for the first time, it does its best to scare you off immediately. You're met with an overwhelming pile of menus that let you do everything from creating a profile to adjusting your X-axis sensitivity. The tutorial doesn't help either, it basically just says "drive the truck," and then buggers off, leaving you to figure out how to actually do that.

But here's the thing, give it a chance to get rolling, and amazingly, crucially, it really works. There are a bunch of reasons why, and they go way beyond the primal satisfaction of driving a hulking great big rig.

For one, there's an incredibly calming sense of slow progression constantly burning in the background. That sat nav in the corner of your screen, always ticking down the miles left to your destination. It's surprisingly satisfying to watch those numbers drop, to finally whittle a distance that seemed impossible down to nothing.

Then there's the option to play your own music or tune into actual European radio stations. If you're feeling daring, you can even pop a video or TV show in another window and zone out, though just like in real life, your chances of ending up wrapped around a streetlight increase dramatically.

There's also a healthy dose of strategy mixed in. Your truck needs fuel, and your driver needs rest. Managing both becomes a delicate balancing act of time management, constantly checking your route and seeing how far you can push yourself before you literally fall asleep at the wheel. But you can eventually make enough money to hire other drivers. Suddenly you're building an empire, trucks roaming across Europe, your hard work rewarded with a skyrocketing bank account.

And if you're that way inclined, you can make things even more complicated. An automatic gearbox is the obvious choice, but nothing's stopping you from shifting manually, or even hooking up a wheel and going full sim mode.

It's also worth mentioning the mods: from big overhauls to small tweaks, there's a ton you can bolt onto the base experience. Want to subtly change the map or handling? There's a mod for that. You can even take things online, hitting the road with truckers from all over the world. Chances are you'll end up in a traffic jam trying to get a ferry somewhere.