Euro Truck Simulator

Not long ago we reviewed a game called Bus Driver in which the player has to drive a bus around various American towns, picking up passengers. It was, surprisingly, much more engaging than it first appeared, although we found the novelty wore off fairly quickly.

With Euro Truck Simulator, made by the same company and based on the same technology, the novelty took even less time to wear off. This time you play a truck driver, taking cargo across Europe.

There's more of a story here – you need to build up a business by taking jobs in each city, which allows you to expand the business into other countries. It's mainland Europe only – the UK isn't included, which removes the need for right hand-drive vehicles (it did mean a couple of hairy moments at the start when we found ourselves on the wrong side of the road).

But, story aside, gameplay in ETS just isn't that interesting, unless you're really (and we mean really) into trucks. There are long stretches of motorways (it's not in real time, thankfully) and there's no fast-forward option. Although the trucks come with cruise control we found our accelerator finger getting tired fast.

Controlling the truck was easy enough, although manoeuvring the cargo section into position to complete a job was harder than it should have been. There are lots of different trucks to buy with the profits from the jobs, though, and truck fans may find more to enjoy here than we did.