This dull, ugly, short, and loud racer has no business being played by anyone except masochists with self-hatred.
(-) only two really bad camera views; ugly graphics and atrocious frame rate; only thirty minutes of gameplay; horrendous voice overs; slow and unpredictable controls; boring parking mini game; distorted and muffled sound renders the music inaudible; seven dollars is fifth-teen dollars too much to pay for this garbage of a game
Eighteen Wheeler American Pro Truck is basically a vending machine semi-truck racer where you haul a loud from one city to the next while trying to outrun your opponent. The core play is pretty straight forward, as a time limit that can be increased by hitting a check point as well as other small cars are the only thing adding some sort of depth to the manner, and even if there was nothing left to tell this would still sound like a pretty dull experience. The game offers a few basic game modes, such as arcade racing, parking, time attack, and multiplayer in case you want to pull an unexpected joke on your friend into thinking you'll be playing a good game with him.
If you take one and only one thing from this review, you need to know that there is absolutely no reason to play American Pro Truck. First you'll be greeted with some standard menus that lack any sort of personality of any kind, then you choose one of four disgruntled and hideous drivers that drive semis that operate the exact same horrible way.
Your first play through will only take twenty minutes, because there are only three race tracks and then you'll see the on-screen credits. My brother bought this game and couldn't finish the last lap because his experience was so bad, and with the most sympathy for him I stood in a state of shock, thinking "That's it? That's the game?" And what makes matters worse, there's only one track and one racer that can be unlocked if for some reason you want to mutilate your self respect and continue playing this game. But let it be known, there is no motivation to continue playing after you start, and giving in to the boredom is your mind's way of telling you to protect yourself from harm's way. Because you'll never get your short twenty minutes back wasting your time with this game's laughable yet heartbreaking extent of content. There's hardly a dollar's worth of content engrossed in this game, and thinking that it actually cost around thirty dollars during its release is absolutely appalling.
And of your twenty minutes of gameplay you'll only be doing two things. Number one, struggling with the wonkey and slow, unresponsive turning controls through the generic race tracks with your haul before your rival, and a parking mini game that's about as much fun as it sounds. You basically drive the semi into a lit grid on the ground and hit your breaks, which only serves the purpose the make the lifeless and meaningless racing on the roads seem a little more fulfilling in comparison.
American Pro Truck is an ugly, ugly game. Originally released on the Dreamcast it wasn't even acceptable at that significantly less powerful system, and on the Gamecube its even more shameful. The semi trucks are jagged and lack detail, the environments are shoddy and unpleasant, and everything is blocky and made to look like an early N64 game with no advancements whatsoever. And even worse, somehow the frame rate struggles to keep up with the action as dull and slow as it may be, which means the in game engine is hardly strong enough to build up on the incredibly petite amount of content on the disc. Also, it may be a racer there is no sense of speed, and although semi trucks never truly go fast on the realistic basis, this game nails the simulation of driving a semi which is about as good as a game that nails the simulation of having your toes yanked out by a pair of pliers. Just no fun and downright painful.
The sound is absolutely no better. At least in theory, you can hear country music in the background, which is appropriate considering the nature of the game. But any music is muffled down pretty low, and is over-saturated by sharp and unpleasant engine riffs that keep going constantly through the entire experience. To make matters worse, you'll repeatedly hear your rival racer and your dispatcher racer come on your CB radio, with their scratchy and irritating voice gracing your speakers with repetitive one liners which if they don't make your ears bleed, then chances are you've eyes are already bleeding and you probably can't find them.
Also, you're only allowed two pointless and ineffective views of the action. You have your in-car view, which consists of a distractingly bumpy front window view and a view directly behind your lengthy semi, and neither do the job especially well. A simple first person view would have been more initiative, but it's not like that's the only easy way out the developers took when making this quick cash-in to try and nag at the Gamecube's success like some filthy leech!
Basically the only thing Eighteen Wheeler American Pro Truck has going for it is it will load when you put it in your disc tray. It's a failure at every level, from poor and slow car handling, hideous visuals and terrible frame-rate, horrendous voice overs and distracting unpleasant noises blocking the music, boring minigames, only two really inconvenient and virtually useless camera views, and it's extremely short. Save for the fact that it's technically playable and not fundamentally broken, this is a largely forgettable experience and shows absolutely no effort in making what makes a good game. If you have an interest in driving a slow semi-truck in a race, then take a few quarters and go to your local arcade, and save the seven dollars by avoiding this travesty of a game at all costs.