Christmas is the perfect time for comfy sims.

Those of you who have known me for a while will know that I have long been an advocate of the “comfy sim” — a specific type of video game where, generally speaking, the pressure is off and the emphasis is very much on simply enjoying the experience of doing something that you perhaps might not have the opportunity to do on a regular basis.

My appreciation for the comfy sim started right back in the days of the Atari 8-bit and Atari ST, when my Dad introduced me to subLOGIC’s Flight Simulator II, the precursor to what we know today as Microsoft Flight Simulator. There was no “point” to Flight Simulator II — to such a degree that my father refuses to refer to it as a “game” to this day — but there was something compelling about it. The experience of flying a plane, of going on adventures, of making use of supplementary material (books, in the case of FSII) to enhance the experience — all of it was a powerful stimulant to the imagination.

There were, of course, military flight simulators also, and I enjoyed those a lot too — particularly because many of them were considerably easier to fly than the hyper-realistic Flight Simulator II! They also tended to have much more of a “game-like” structure to them, in that you’d have objectives to complete, merits to earn, medals to acquire and all manner of other things. But at their heart, they were still pretty comfy experiences about imagining you were doing something that you don’t get the opportunity to do on a regular basis.

My comfy sims of preference today are SCS’ excellent Euro Truck Simulator 2 and American Truck Simulator. I’m hard-pressed to tell you which of them is my favourite, because they’re both excellent and have their own distinct appeal elements — but what I do know is that when I want to relax and just not really think about stuff for a while, driving a truck is one of the best things I can possibly do, particularly as I have a nice wheels and pedal setup that really helps with the sense of immersion.

For the unfamiliar, in ETS2 and ATS (as we shall refer to them hereafter), you begin life as an aspiring trucker who owns a run-down old garage in the city of your choice, but who doesn’t have a truck to their name. You begin your adventure by running “quick jobs” for local companies, who provide trucks and trailers for you, and pay any fees you might incur along the way such as road tolls and fuel costs. After a while, though, you’ll crave the freedom that owning your own truck provides — so you can either grind your way up to affording one out of your own pocket (which takes a while) or take out a loan with which to purchase a nice starter truck.

From there, the choice of what you want to do is up to you, within reason — remember that if you took out a loan to pay for your truck, you’ll need to repay that a bit at a time. But if you just want to cruise the roads exploring, you can do that; if you want to take jobs from the companies you stumble across, like a freelance trucker-for-hire, you can do that; if you want to systematically search out the most profitable opportunities in the local area, you can do that; if you want to buy your own trailer and pick up freight directly from the source, you can do that. As you progress, you can even buy and expand more garages, grow your fleet of trucks, expand your empire and be rolling in more money than you know what to do with.

The nice thing, though, is that ETS2 and ATS don’t put any pressure on you to do any of those things that you don’t want to. If the one thing you enjoy is simply driving around, do that — maybe taking the occasional job to cover your daily loan installments. If you enjoy the structured experience of taking jobs, you can focus entirely on that. If you enjoy the management aspect of attempting to build up your company and dominate the entire map with your business empire, you can do that. Or you can do a bit of everything.

There’s no “wrong” approach to ETS2 and ATS, and that’s the core of the comfy sim. It provides a framework and a playground in which you can have fun, but the exact details of that fun are left up to you. It is essentially an imaginative toy in software form — and sometimes it’s just what the doctor ordered.

1280: More Truckin’

I had an all-too-brief chat with my good friend Mr Alex Connolly earlier today, during which I briefly extolled the virtues of Euro Truck Simulator 2, which I played for a good few hours today. This post is primarily intended for Alex — and anyone else who is similarly curious about Euro Truck Simulator 2 — since we only had a brief moment to talk earlier.

Here’s what Euro Truck Simulator 2 is all about, then.

You start the game by creating your driver profile by giving yourself a name, naming your haulage company-to-be, choosing a logo for yourself and selecting a truck you like the look of. You then choose a home base somewhere in Europe, and then it’s off to work you go.

Your first job is what is later referred to in the game as a “quick job” — you’re provided with a truck already loaded up with cargo, and all you have to do is deliver it to the destination. If you elect to follow the tutorial, you’re walked through various elements of the interface, though you’re not told where a few important keys (headlights, windscreen wipers, indicators) are, so you’ll need to check the options menu for that. (I recommend assigning all of those controls to a controller, if you’re using one.)

Delivering cargo is a simple matter of following your GPS, which sits in the corner of the screen like a space sim’s multi-function display. (Indeed, here it is multifunction, too, allowing you to switch between views of your route, diagnostic information and other helpful bits and pieces.) While driving, you’ll have to be reasonably careful. Hitting things can damage your truck and potentially cargo, too — the latter will cost you some of your fee at the end of the run. Similarly, breaking the rules of the road will cause you to be fined, though much like reality, you can get away with speeding so long as no-one catches you doing it.

The roads are convincingly rendered, meaning you’ll have to merge carefully onto motorways, slow down for country roads, and stop-start-stop-start at the traffic lights found in city centres. If you’re driving in the UK, you’ll have to drive on the left; head out onto the continent, meanwhile, and you’ll be on the right. Both left- and right-hand drive trucks are available.

Once you reach your destination, there’ll be a glowing parking space that you must reverse into. This is harder than it sounds, as trucks and trailers behave strangely when in reverse. You can, of course, press the “auto-park” button, but if you do so you’re effectively declaring that you’re a big wuss.

Once you’ve successfully parked and detached your cargo, you’ll be rewarded with money and experience points, with a bonus if you parked yourself. Levelling up rewards you with skill points, which you can plug into one of several different skills — one allows you to transport hazardous (and consequently higher-value) cargo of various types; another allows you to take on more long-distance jobs; another still provides you with larger rewards for heavy, oversized or otherwise valuable cargo. You can effectively tailor your driver’s profile according to the types of job you like to do.

After a couple of successful runs, you’ll be invited to head along to a truck dealership that sells the type of truck you indicated was your “preferred” type at the outset of the game. A new truck will inevitably be much too expensive for you to afford with the few thousand Euros you’ve acquired from a couple of jobs, so you’ll receive an email shortly afterwards from the bank inviting you to take out a loan. Here you have a choice; keep doing quick jobs for reasonable pay until you can afford to buy a truck outright, or take out a loan, buy your own truck immediately, and ensure you make enough money each in-game day to pay off that particular instalment.

Once you have your own truck — which can be customised in numerous ways, more of which open up as you level up — you have a lot more freedom. You can freely drive around Europe at your leisure, and the in-game map keeps track of how much of the road network you’ve explored. Arriving at new towns “discovers” them and unlocks them as a starting point for future jobs; coming across “?” markers on the map reveals new truck dealerships, recruitment agencies for hiring additional drivers for your fleet and other facilities; stopping at petrol stations or hotels allows you to restore your fuel and fatigue levels respectively.

Having your own truck allows you to take jobs from the “Freight Market” rather than the “Quick Job” menu. Here, you have to actually drive to the place where the job offer is — they expire after a while, so if you don’t get there quickly enough, you’re not doing the job — and then manually attach the trailer to your truck.

From here, it’s a case of proceeding to do more jobs and build up your available funds, then gradually build up your fleet of trucks and drivers so it’s not just you hauling shit around Europe, but your very own army of bearded chain-smokers too. Each of your hired drivers can be levelled up the same way as your own character, so you can get different drivers to specialise in different things.

All in all, it’s a really neat game. I didn’t think it would have much to offer beyond the initial appeal of “WOW I’M DRIVING A LORRY” but there’s actually a surprisingly competent game in there, too. And even if you struggle to handle one of these many-wheeled beasts, you can have some fun by causing chaos on the open world. Which is nice.

Anyway, there’s my enthusing on the subject of Euro Truck Simulator 2. It’s surprisingly worth your time, particularly if you like open-world driving games where you just pootle around rather than killing everybody. Plus there’s something inherently satisfying about driving such a gigantic vehicle and not killing everyone around you, or ending up on your side. (Though it is possible to end up on your side.)

So there you have it. Euro Truck Simulator 2. Enjoy.

1279: Hauling Ass (and Wood, Propane and Other Exciting Things)

I picked up Euro Truck Simulator 2 in the Steam Sale the other day on a bit of a whim. This is one of those simulator games that, like Farming Simulator, was roundly mocked upon its original release, but promptly turned out to be a rather good game.

I haven’t spent a huge amount of time with it so far and I don’t know how much time I will spend with it in the long term, but early impressions are that it is basically a game that I’ve thought should exist for a long time — that is to say, it’s Elite, but on the roads instead of in space.

Okay, that’s perhaps not quite accurate; you’re not really “trading” stuff, you’re simply taking jobs and hauling shit (sometimes literally) from one place to another, and there’s certainly no “combat” besides any accidents you deliberately cause yourself, but the idea of fusing a management/business game with a vehicle simulator is a sound one, and it has always surprised me somewhat that we’ve only ever seen it happen in space, really.

Euro Truck Simulator 2 is an odd experience. It’s a driving game, but without all the jostling for position and chaos that normally accompanies driving games that focus on racing. It’s an open-world game, but without anything to really “do” besides seek out truck dealerships, try and visit every road in the game and sightsee. I haven’t got far enough into the game to look at the business sim side of things yet, but I assume that will add an element of light strategy to the mix, particularly once you start hiring other drivers, too.

It’s a peculiarly relaxing experience to play. Once your truck is out on the open road, you don’t really have to do a lot besides ensure you don’t hit anything, and try not to get caught by speed cameras. But it’s pleasingly chilled out to just trundle along at 50mph down some convincingly-realised (if geographically-inaccurate) roads that go to real, actual places with recognisable landmarks. It also implements another feature that I’ve always thought should be in open-world driving games — the ability to stream Internet radio stations as the soundtrack to your drive. I was listening to some pleasingly mellow German jazz while I drove from Southampton to Dover earlier.

I say it’s a relaxing experience to play. Well, that’s only mostly true: it’s relaxing until you reach your destination and have to reverse the fucking thing into a parking space. Parking a truck is horrendously difficult and I have new-found respect for anyone who is able to do it successfully, particularly in a yard that doesn’t have very much space available. I don’t really understand how to make it go the correct way when I’m reversing it yet, but I’m sure it’s something that comes with practice.

Anyway, I guess what I’m saying in a roundabout way is that if you’ve seen Euro Truck Simulator 2 in the Steam sale and are mildly curious about it, do yourself a favour and download it. You might just find yourself enjoying the experience. It’s just a shame there isn’t multiplayer; hauling stuff around Europe with a friend would be a lot of fun, I feel.