Truck Driver: The American Dream – Review
08.10.2023 - 21:49
/ xboxoldies.com
The first Truck Driver, from Soedesco arrived back in 2019 with mixed reviews, while it wasn’t upto the standards of the PC based Truck Simulator franchise, it was one of the only (and possibly the best) Trucking Sim available on the Xbox and has built 1uote a following thanks to great support from the developers ironing out a few launch issues.
Roll on to 2023, and now Truck Driver: The American Dream is getting ready to pull away, with a much more grizzled and grounded take on trucking. Starting off back in 1987 with a short prologue that leaves a great first impression, driving is a little simplified, but with unique and very effective special effects as you drive a few miles to reach a nearby shelter during a large storm and incoming tornado, it already feels a long way from the presentation of the first game as you’re introduced to a much more narrative driven story.
Back to the future, you’ll play as a self-professed loser aiming to turn his life around by stepping into his father’s shoes and driving a giant truck (the American dream, right?).
As you start your journey for the American Dream, you’ll be taking on a few small jobs with a friend who introduces you to the basics. working through a few jobs which are separated by chapters, you’ll eventually start working for a local company and taking longer hauls as well as earning XP and money to work on a basic skill tree to improve things like fuel efficiency and buy upgrades to improve the performance and aesthetics of your truck, there’s also a few other trucks to unlock, which don’t seem to cost anything to acquire, but you will have to be-buy any upgrades, so I found myself sticking with the first truck as there’s little difference performance wise.
Working through various jobs you’ll be hauling wood, cement, fruit and televisions across what’s essentially a pretty disappointing map, there’s a few too many long straight roads and even the “towns” are lacking any depth or population with little more than a handful of cars ever on the road around you, which greatly limits the challenge or the feeling of accomplishment.
Sadly, the map layout is one of only a few disappointing areas, so let’s take a look at a couple of shortcomings.
While the landscape and scenery are fairly well populated, the on-screen detail is kept at a minimum, especially at distance were there’s a hazy distortion that gives a scrambled appearance to distant features. It matches the overall sketched comic style we see on cut-scenes and does a fairly good job of preventing to many distant objects popping in to view (although this is still apparent in some circumstances).
While I can see the technical choice, and in some circumstances such as heavy rain, things work