The middle shows control tips and tells you what bonus’ or penalties are in greater detail. At the top of the screen is a read-out telling you the latest bonus or penalty, and total score is on the opposite side. The user interface is pretty big, but it doesn’t obscure your view, along the bottom is a map showing where the next stop is, to the right is a countdown to the time you need to be at the next stop (not essential), in the middle it shows how many passengers are on-board and also their contentment, the last part covers the basic driving read-outs. □ As for hardware requirements I ran at full settings and didn’t experience any FPS drop (as always Q6600, 8800GT, 4GB RAM). The game actually has quite a large range of visual settings, although they follow that strange concept some games have of splitting the options between in-game and out-game dialogues. This doesn’t follow for everything however, some people may find the visuals a bit off-putting. The visuals aren’t too bad actually, the buses are nicely detailed and the roads and buildings aren’t too bad.
Sadly you can’t choose the style of bus\coach but there is a nice selection on offer. I didn’t pay enough attention, so I don’t know how many missions need to be completed to unlock the next tier, but it’s either three or four. You select from a list of ‘missions’, these are divided into five tiers with six missions in each. The game is based around a points system, good driving practices (indicating at the right time, not going through red lights) result in bonus points, bad driving practices (changing lanes without indicating, crashing) gets you negative points. The series was made by SCS Software, and several years after the first 18 Wheels of Steel was created they released similar game.īus Driver, strangely enough, is about driving a bus. That reads as pretty boring but like Harvest Moon and playing Doctors or Teachers when you were young, fitting into a role can be a lot of fun. Sure they look very average (and in some areas, dire), they don’t have realistic physics and the playing area is sparse, but they allow me to imagine being a long-distance lorry driver. The less timed events there are, the more I like the game.ġ8 Wheels of Steel is another driving game (in fact it’s a business simulator), I never bought any of the series in the end but I did enjoy the demos. GTR 2 is a racing game, aside from training, the main races are all about shaving seconds and beating the competition. Some examples Test Drive Unlimited is a driving game, although the timed and racing challenges are the focus, you could just spend time driving around the island in your starter car, then there are the car collection and drop off missions where the only thing that matters is getting there in one piece.
Driving games can also have time limits but they aren’t the sole focus. Racing games are what I would classify as any game that requires you to win by time. I don’t know of anyone who has made the distinction before but they are very different. Racing games aren’t my cup of tea (neither is tea but that’s another matter), driving games however are.