Suprisingly amazing!

ETS2 is a great truck driving simulator with elements of running a haulage business thrown in.

Suprisingly amazing!

Postby VictoryWorks » Tue Mar 01, 2016 3:55 pm

This game is... just that!
I had no interest in ETS.. 2 or otherwise. How interesting could driving a truck be? Ok, you could say the same about trains.. but I love trains. Trucks are just slow things in my way when I'm driving my car! :lol:

Then American Truck Sim came on steam last month and I thought I'd try the demo, just because I was bored one night. It was kinda fun but I got a little fed up with breaking laws I wasn't familiar with! I wondered if the Euro version was any good? So I tried the demo. As soon as I hit the A27, M27, M25, A12 - a route I've driven dozens of times - I was totally hooked.
I played the demo through 3 times, deleting it and starting over when I reached too many miles/levels, and my kids loved playing it as well which was cool. But sods law, having passed it over numerous times on sale, now I wanted it it was full price everywhere. Finally I tracked down an ETS2 Gold (base game + East DLC) steam key for £9.99 and grabbed it - and then came the modding.

Oh my word!

I've come up with a new phrase over the last few days - it's called Late Access.
Early Access is hugely popular these days but what do you get? You often pay over the normal price, to get hold of a part-built game that's sometimes little more than a tech demo with limited function, and by the time the full game is complete you've probably played it so many ways - and started over so many times - you're kind of bored with it.
ETS2 is the perfect Late Access game. Not so old that it looks horrible, but old enough that it's inexpensive to buy (I got the Scandinavia DLC as well for £7, but more on that in a minute) and the style of game that has been modded up the yazoo!

The base game is good - modded it's truly incredible!
I have so many AI cars, buses, bikes (motor and bicycle!), lorries, trucks and trailers that I can literally drive for many real life hours without seeing the same thing twice. I have more traffic active than default so it's a real challenge to drive in busy times of the day. Graphical tweaks, little changes (yellow backed UK speed cams, removed the no entry floating icons, brighter lights more visible at night, etc) that make it really immersive. And then there's ProMods. This is a map that expands the game map hugely - all the way to Moscow, and up to Iceland (and driving on the Northern road of Iceland is freaking terrifying!) - and adds lots of other little improvements. This was why I bought the Scandinavia DLC as you need it for it work - but for £7 is was a bargain for all that extra map.
It's so easy to mod I even modded it myself, changing the default Time Of Year setting to be mid-Autumn (to match the scenery where harvesting is clearly visible) from the default of 21st June(!) which made the nights too bright and fixing the incorrect UK speed limits in ProMods - as well as upping just the cars motorway and dual carriageway limits to give a more realistic UK traffic pattern - ie, most UK drivers speed a little! Because the software is so mature the web is littered with articles to assist in modding and making adjustments yourself.
I sorted out my head tracking (which I tend to forget to use in TS as I'm so busy stopping/starting and bug fixing) so I can look around easily.. and tomorrow I await the arrival of a force feedback steering wheel and peddle set!
Because I am clearly hooked! :D

So 3 things to take away:
1. Pete is hooked on ETS2!
2. Late Access is WAY better than Early Access
3. ETS2 is REALLY good - even if you think driving a truck sounds really boring, turns out that it isn't when it's in a game :D
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Re: Suprisingly amazing!

Postby BigVern » Wed Jul 24, 2019 7:58 am

Sorry for the huge bump but I love the concept of "late access". I too bought ETS2 on release, played it for a bit then kind of discarded it. However I recently picked it up again, nice stress free gaming on our current hot evenings and I'm totally hooked (not just ETS2 but ATS as well). Something about how SCS have realised their world, perfect suspension of disbelief and after a while you really don't notice that 400 mile drive is only around 20 miles on the game map. Currently gathering all the DLC for ETS2 so I can grab Pro Mods, which from what I've seen and read makes the game even better.

I almost wish SCS would look at adapting the software for train simming or even just put driveable trains in. The problem being of course that 20:1 scaling wouldn't work nearly as well for rail infrastructure as it does for road haulage. As a first, I would actually like to see them drop in bus and coach support for passenger service, after the disappointment of Fernbus and OMSI2, the latter I couldn't even get running properly.
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