American Truck Sim's Heavenly Scenes & Hellish Sounds
Vroom vroom
The worst music. The worst. And yet, at the same time, the Beach Boys-as-muzak soundtrack to this new American Truck Simulator [official site] footage entirely fits the faintly awkward cheesiness of the sterling lorry driver series. I sort of love it.
In another world and another life where I have time free every day to spend downtime in front of a monitor, I would spend that time tooling around in Euro Truck Simulator 2. It's strange: if I'm on a long real-life drive, I'd given anything to stop, escape the motorway, get away from the road. But invite me to spend a few hours on a pretend road and I'm all over it. Maybe it's because I'm in a big, slow lorry, so any sense that I need to rush is removed. Maybe it's because it doesn't really do M25 gridlocks and the attendant grinding agony in my left ankle from stop-start driving in first gear for two hours. Maybe it's because I don't get anyone killed if I'm reckless.
I like to drive around Swansea and Cardiff most, as they're my old university stomping grounds, but the recent Scandianvian DLC has been a treat too. The US locales look as though they'll be the instant preference, however. The big sky, the chrome, the diners, the desert - tropes aplenty, but they're real-life tropes, and the epitome of the road fantasy for so many non-Americans.
Dear God, though, the music. And what's that sort of squelchy-click noise in the background?