Xbox Review | Truck Driver: The American Dream

“Making it more exciting with deadlines, additional challenges, and difficulty would have added another dimension to the current monotonous gameplay.”

The open road, your well-deserved truck and jobs to keep you moving. Truck Driver: The American Dream is all about a man called Nathan trying to make his way in the trucking industry with the help of his dad’s friend, Clint, and others along his journey. You play as Nathan and have a whopping thirty-one chapters of driving bliss to get immersed into so I hope you’ve got plenty of snacks and fluids to keep you going! As you progress through the story, you will come across additional trucks and the ability to upgrade/customise your vehicle so you feel right at home. Developed by KYODAI and published by SOEDESCO, Truck Driver: The American Dream lets you step into the shoes and life of a truck driver, giving you a gaming simulation experience and looking into what it’s like to drive, day in and day out. Let me explain to you exactly what the game had in store for me when I started on my first day.

I had to ensure I didn’t run red lights and abide by the highway code – to a degree…

Things I liked!

• Nice story | The only thing that kept me trucking through all thirty-one chapters of Truck Driver: The American Dream was my curiosity regarding the story which went along with the gameplay. I can’t go into much detail as I would be spoiling what happens during the story but what I will say is there were some unexpected twists and turns that changed Nathan and his future outlook. The story was told at a reasonable pace and the small cutscenes that presented themselves at the end of select chapters gave me enough time to have a break and take in events which had occurred. Is it the best narrative you’ll ever experience? No. However, it kept the game alive for me and was the best component by a mile.

• Easy-to-play simulation | The controls in Truck Driver: The American Dream are pretty straightforward once you’ve had an hour or so to get used to them. Driving the truck itself is easy and comes with very little complications. On the other hand, once you have cargo attached, you have to be more sensible and methodical when it comes to navigating your truck to avoid crashes and damage to your vehicle. Turning corners and making sharp turns needs to be done carefully – there is no way of using shortcuts so you must follow the route ahead. No shortcuts you say? Yes, anywhere which is even remotely out of bounds is cordoned off by a futuristic triangle-shaped barrier so following your GPS is paramount. Easy controls mean most will find this easy to get the hang of.

Nice little scenery images used for the ‘cutscenes’ gave the game some personality.

Neither good nor bad

• Upgrades and skill points | As you complete chapters, you will gain experience and money which can be put towards skill points and upgrades/cosmetics for your truck. The skill points can be distributed as and when you please and affect things such as fuel consumption, stamina drain, and upgrade costs to name a few. The active upgrades for your truck are similar and affect the fuel, durability, and performance which can help you stay on the road for longer without needing to stop but these need to be purchased and equipped at garages. Throughout the game, you will unlock additional trucks but I couldn’t see anything which told me if they were an upgrade to what I was already using or purely for cosmetic purposes so I stuck with the original. Cosmetics are just there to make your truck look better but even additional lights and bumpers won’t make any difference to the truck practically – the roof bar lights don’t even turn on! I think the trucks should have had their own strong and weak points for you to decide when you wanted to change. Otherwise, not too bad but easy to improve.

• Realism | There is a degree of realism which has been applied to Truck Driver: The American Dream and although I thought this was a great idea, it hasn’t been executed as well as it could have been. You must remember to fill up at gas stations (and the cost will come out of your hard-earned money), sleep at dedicated stops to regain stamina and stop at red lights/avoid crashing into cars to avoid instantaneous fines. So why not go all out? Include the need to stop for food/drink, adhere to the speed limits, be fined for driving on the other side of the road or for having your full beam on etc – there was tonnes of potential! Maybe I’m thinking about the details too much, seeing as the game’s focus should be truck driving, but the developers started it and I’m just following up with my opinion.

• Audio and voice acting | I was happily surprised at the audio quality of Truck Driver: The American Dream and found it nice to play with my headphones on. The radio music isn’t bad and gives you a variety of options to listen to but can only be heard in first-person mode. The truck sounds – engine, indicators, reversing, parking brake – they’re all realistic and add to the truck driving experience. The weather, notably the rain and thunder, showed itself frequently and made its presence known. Now, the voice acting… Have the voice actors/actresses heard of emotions and how to convey that in their voices? If you listen to the various people in this game, you’d think they don’t know how to voice anger, sadness, or happiness. They sound clear as day and are easy to understand but they need to get in touch with their acting skills because they aren’t convincing anyone.

• Options availability | Nine times out of ten, when I start a game, I like to go through the settings and see what options I can change to improve my experience. There were numerous options I could choose from but I also noticed a couple missing which I like to have the choice to change. Let’s start with the positives – there are options for colour blindness, filters, rendering mode, v-sync, motion blur, chromatic aberration etc which is fantastic and exactly what I would expect. However, there was no choice to change the map rotation which caused an issue for me. As I experience issues with my navigation and directions, I always like the map to auto-rotate in the direction I’m travelling but with Truck Driver: The American Dream, I struggled as this wasn’t an option. Also, I couldn’t believe there was no manual/automatic mode which I think has been hugely overlooked. Good options overall for most people but they fell slightly short for me.

Beautiful views while driving are something I believe many people can appreciate.

Things I disliked!

• Continuation problems | Nothing peeves me off more than losing progress on games, nothing. So, you can imagine my annoyance when I lost all my money and experience/skill points when I was forced to use Chapter Select to continue my story. What does she mean you may be asking yourself – I’ll explain. When I reached mission 16, my game refused to load when holding A so I decided to try reloading from the dashboard and uninstalling/reinstalling which was unsuccessful. The only thing left was to redo the previous chapter in Chapter Select which was successful but it deleted all my skill points, experience, and upgrades so I was essentially starting from scratch halfway through the game. Yeah, at least I didn’t have to start from mission one but it was still a humungous dent in my time played. I mean, why should everything reset just because I used Chapter Select in the first place?! This is something that needs looking into and fixing ASAP before other people suffer the same disadvantages.

• Traffic nightmare | Driving on Truck Driver: The American Dream was simple enough but horrifying AI drivers made the game infuriating and had me getting severely impatient. Their speed is inconsistent, they crash into other vehicles (including mine, damaging my truck!), they push you out the way on dual carriageways, they continuously beep at you while you’re waiting at a red light, they get stuck at junctions… They’re the worst! Whenever the roads were clear, I was just happily cruising to my next pickup or delivery but the second my eyes came across another car, they were rolling the next second. As video games go, this was appalling and certainly added to my dislike of the game – and that is me being polite.

• Poor graphics | From a visual perspective, Truck Driver: The American Dream leaves plenty to be desired. The cutscenes look like a washed-out watercolour and although I’m not sure if this was the desired look, they should have been given more detail and love. The natural environment is pretty dull with a couple of animals seen rarely and when coming to built-up areas, they felt pretty dead, even with their neon signs and foliage dotted around. The weather made the roads incredibly hard to see (come rain or shine) which was horrible. The detailing of the trucks was acceptable but again, would have gained from additional attention to detail. The quality of everything is underwhelming which had me questioning the £50 price tag because, in its current state, that is completely bonkers and unjustified.

• Visual issues | From strobing lighting to buildings appearing out of nowhere, cars disappearing to incorrect subtitles – the visuals need fixing! I don’t know what happened with the lights but as I was driving, there were multiple random spots which flashed up around me – I thought I was going to get abducted by UFOs! Buildings, mountains, cars – they all randomly popped into the frame more times than I can count which was incredibly annoying, making rendering a concern. When driving along, cars would vanish into thin air. Subtitles didn’t always match the dialogue and there were one or two typing mistakes. I would hear and see police cars in the distance which would then be gone in the blink of an eye. They all need looking at and fixing because these combined with the poor visuals were a match made in hell. Not sure if that is an actual statement but I’m making it one.

• Tiresome gameplay | I’ll be the first to state that being a truck driver can’t be the most exciting job in the world – I would imagine it’s quite uneventful, to be honest. That being said, it’s a video GAME. Making it more exciting with deadlines, additional challenges, and difficulty would have added another dimension to the current monotonous gameplay. Also, if I recall correctly, some of the missions are near enough repeated with the only difference being the progression of the story. I hate to say it but I felt myself falling asleep multiple times while playing – I had to play in smaller increments and give myself breaks often. From now on in real life, whenever I drive past lorries parked up, I’ll give them a thought; it can’t be easy.

• Boring achievements | As achievement lists go, this one couldn’t be much less imaginative if it tried. I got a little apprehensive to begin with as the first achievement involved a time restraint but that was short-lived when I looked and noticed just how effortless all the other achievements were. ‘Complete X Chapter’ and a couple of miscellaneous tasks which you get from playing anyway. How boring. I’d rather have time limit challenges, impeccable driving, refill X amount of fuel, and rack up fines of X amount for a couple of creative examples. I know not everyone cares about achievements but I would have liked something more diverse than what has been complied.

How long did I play the review before publishing? Around 17 Hours
How long to beat the story? Approximately 15-20 Hours
How many Achievements did I earn before publishing? 35/35 OR 1000/1000G
How long to achieve 1000G | Approximately 15-20 Hours
You’ll love this game if you like these | Truck Driver, On The Road – The Truck Simulator, Truck & Logistics Simulator