Well, I’ve reviewed several ‘silly’ games recently. I think it’s time for something a tad more ‘serious’ now. Developer KYODAI and publisher SOEDESCO bring you Truck Driver: The American Dream. But, is it a dream or a nightmare?

Years after the death of your father, a famous and well-respected truck driver, you decide to get your life back on track by stepping into your father’s shoes. However, this new path doesn’t come without its hardships, as the road to becoming a successful truck driver might be a hard and lonely one. So strap yourself in and be ready for anything as you chase the American Dream in this brand-new adventure!

Truck Driver: The American Dream is a truck driving simulation, but not a simulation at the same time. As the blurb up there tells you, you play as a driver called Nathan, stepping into the shoes of your late father. There is an ongoing story throughout the game that is told to you via static cut scenes and in-game dialogue. But, you don’t buy a game like this for its storytelling, do you? You buy a game like this to experience the life of a truck driver and its simulation angle.

Well, this is where Truck Driver: The American Dream begins to fall apart. Just getting right into the nitty-gritty. The main part of truck driving, the driving of the truck, is horrible. The mechanics and physics feel very off. The trucks themselves are stupidly light. Now, I have to admit to have never driven an 18-wheeler… but I’m guessing that they are pretty heavy vehicles. In this game though, they just feel really, really light and handle more like go-karts. There is a slight delay of a second or two when you steer and then, the truck will suddenly veer off in the direction that you are steering as if it’s an F1 car going around a hairpin turn. The driving mechanics just do not feel like you are driving a truck. I tried playing around with the sensitivity in the options, but nothing worked.

Trying to take a gentle curve in this game is next to impossible due to how the truck handles. You just gently move the analogue stick to take the bend, nothing. You move it a bit more, nothing. You move it just a millimetre more… and the truck almost turns 90°. Oh, you can take sharp turns brilliantly. Head to a t-junction and just force your thumb on the analog stick left or right and you’ll take a corner with ease. But slight and gentle bends? No chance. Just on a fundamental level, the driving of the truck in this truck-driving game is terrible.

The map is pretty big and I’d call it a ‘semi-open world’. You can drive along any of the many (some very, very long) roads in the game but, all of the roads are fenced off. So you can’t just go randomly driving off-road and such. You are stuck to road travel only, which does make sense as you don’t really tend to see 18-wheelers randomly taking a shortcut across a hilly field. Yet, this does make the map feel very restrictive and claustrophobic. As I said, semi-open world. As big as the map is, it also feels rather empty too. There are several places to visit and such, but most of the map consists of the (some very, very long) roads and not much else.

There are bits that can feel quite simulation-like. The driving is very monotonous and that’s not me having a pop at the game. I would assume that driving trucks is monotonous in real life too. You have to manually start and stop your engine and apply the parking brake. You can use your indicators when turning (though you don’t have to). Some laws of the road have to be adhered to. If you drive through a red light, you’ll be fined, as an example. You’ll even need to fill up your tank and take rest stops when you become tired. So yeah, there are elements of the game that are simulation-like. But, on the other hand, most of the game feels nothing like a simulation. If you are looking for a truck driving deep sim, you won’t get that with Truck Driver: The American Dream. In reality, this is more like a narrative-driven adventure game that features some basic truck driving as its core gameplay loop.

That gameplay loop really boils down to not much more than go to location A and pick up a load, to then drive to location B and drop said load off. Rinse and repeat. You get snippets of the ongoing story drip-fed to you as you progress. When you successfully finish a job, you earn money and experience. The experience points are used to unlock new skills. While money can be used to repair and upgrade your truck. You even customise your rig with new paint jobs and more.

As I played Truck Driver: The American Dream, I did discover several bugs and glitches. I had no engine sound when driving. All of the other sounds were there, the spoken dialogue, the ambient sounds of the world and even the truck’s horn sounded off fine… but the engine of my truck was silent. It sounded like I was driving an electric vehicle. There was a lot of screen stuttering and slight pauses as I drove around the map… a lot of screen stuttering and slight pauses. The game froze up on me more than a few times and I had to hard reset my Xbox. I even had the game decide to quit itself and kick me out to the Xbox dashboard more than once. This felt more like I was playing an unreleased Beta over a fully finished game. The optimisation is pretty bad and I know that the Xbox Series X is capable of running much more intense games than this.

While not a bug per se, the AI of the traffic is atrocious. They stick to the basic rules of the road, to a point, but they also drive like Star Wars stormtroopers shoot. Several times I had the AI just drive into my truck and cause damage. In one instance, I was at a crossroads and wanting to turn right, I stopped and had my indicators on. There was a car on my left that had also stopped to (I thought) let me make my right turn. So I began to move and was about halfway through my turn, with a trailer on the back of my truck. As the trailer was in the middle of the crossroad, that was when the AI car decided to drive forward and crash right into the trailer I was hauling. The AI had a bit of a habit of driving into my truck.

The biggest bug I found though did break the game. One delivery had me driving along a road when my truck fell through the tarmac. All of the AI cars did too. We were all stuck on the scenery under the road and couldn’t get back up. Meaning that I couldn’t complete the delivery and was left in limbo. Even when I loaded up the last save, the same thing happened. So I couldn’t progress any further in the game. That was when I quit playing, I didn’t really have much of a choice really.

In all honestly, Truck Driver: The American Dream isn’t what I would call a ‘bad’ game. It’s not a good game either, it is a distinctly average game that has several fundamental flaws, bugs and performance issues. Maybe a patch or seven could make this much more playable in the future? As it is right now though, I would suggest that you give it a miss… especially when you take into consideration the hefty price tag of £50. That’s not too far off the price of a newly released AAA game. In fact, it’s more expensive than a newly released AAA game. Here’s a copy of Assassin’s Creed Mirage on the Xbox for £40, deluxe edition too. So £50 for this is a huge thumbs down.

Truck Driver: The American Dream is a £20 game at the most and that is if it was fully patched and working 100% fine, which it isn’t. Its current £50 price tag is ridiculous, especially with the issues that it does have, game-breaking bugs and such.