You get what you bargain for: nothing less, but certainly nothing more.

User Rating: 6 | 18 Wheels of Steel: American Long Haul PC
"American Long Haul" is I believe the 6th game in the 18WOS series that has been running since 2002. And once again, this new installment is nothing more than a slight overhaul of the previous game ("Haulin"). This time, the changes are limited to a few new locations (southern Canada and northern Mexico) and the title music has a little more 'heavymetal' feeling to it - while the menus and dialog screens have stayed the same, of course. Everything else is exactly - and read my lips: exactly - the same as in the previous game. Mediocre graphics, stupid radio voiceovers, the sometimes odd traffic behaviour, everything is still here.

One can debate whether SCS Software / Valusoft should have released patches instead of selling these updates as new games, but I guess the low price gives them the benefit of the doubt. At least they have fixed the most annoying bugs from the last game, like the traffic lights that switch from green to red and vice versa every, like, two seconds.

To most gamers, the core gameplay will be very boring. But those people wouldn't buy a trucking game anyway. It's more like a simulator, in which you haul goods from one place to another. To me, it's a welcome change of pace from other games, and it's pretty relaxing to play the game using a steering wheel, while listening to the radio (for instance an internet stream in Windows, since the game itself only has two songs in its soundtrack). The only thing missing is a window to put my left elbow into. :-) After a while and buying yourself a decent truck, you can hire other drivers and let them drive for you. After this, there is nothing more to do than driving and earning money. This is what I find the biggest shortcoming of the game: all of a sudden - after, say, 10-15 hours of gameplay - the game becomes boring, because there aren't any challenges left and there is nothing left to do.

At the moment, SCS Software is working on "Euro Truck Simulator" which, as the name suggests, features European rigs and highways, which should be the first real change in five years.