Whilst I may be in a minority when I admit to having now played more than one bus simulator, I am by no means embarrassed to have played the likes of Bus Driver by SCS Software.
Such a game has a quirky addictiveness and is unexpectedly well produced, impressive looking, fun to play and rewarding.
I have never had any particular desire to become a bus driver, nor will this game realistically teach you to be one. It is what games should be; a game that rewards, surprises, and ultimately contains that all important balance between satisfaction and frustration that keeps you wanting to play it.
Bus Simulator 2008 by Avanquest Software contains none of these qualities.
Bus Simulator sets you within the fictional city of Megacity and offers the opportunity to complete 34 missions on 18 different tracks, using a variety of bus models and styles, with the option of downloading additional buses via the internet.
Bus Simulator 2008 advertises itself as a realistic driving simulation, with detailed graphics, and tycoon elements. Perhaps here lies the key problem in the conception of this game. In my experience any game that tries to be all things to all people will ultimately fail in every aspect. Concentrate on one key area and do it well and there will be a hope of succeeding.
In Bus Simulator 2008, animation is non existent to the point that other vehicles will simply go from being like bricks floating down the road to bricks suddenly facing in another direction, with no animation in between. Similarly, the whole driving experience feels horribly unrealistic and your bus will essentially slide down the road, or bounce off the kerb like a dodgem.
Artificial Intelligence is another key area in which Bus Simulator 2008 performs woefully. In essence, there is none. Cars don't seem to realise that you've actually bothered to stop at a red light and frequently just carry on driving until they crash into you, whereas people are like zombies. At their worst, people have even been known get run over by your stationery bus by walking into it at random locations.
The ‘tycoon' aspect of Bus Simulator 2008 is superficial and largely revolves around trying to encourage more passengers to travel by running marketing and advertising campaigns on the side of your vehicle, and by altering the price of tickets. The aim being to be able to afford more expensive/different buses. It features an interface littered with spelling mistakes and one section still written in the game's original language of German.
This German theme continues on the website made available to download additional content and much needed bug fixes and patches, where most of the English sections are actually written in German. The resource itself is futile, as the only fixes and upgrades available at the time of writing were for the German version of Bus Simulator 2008. These fixes are already at the 1.40 stage, so I wouldn't hold your breath to find a fix/upgrade for a UK version of the game.
Graphically, Bus Simulator 2008 is extremely poor. Try and run the game on a mid upper level PC by today's standards at its highest level of ‘detail' and it not only isn't going to happen, it's still going to look appalling. Little effort or talent has clearly been put into the graphics engine, and this is the story throughout the game.
You say the name Bus Simulator and a lot of people cringe, however the bus simulation game is one that has secured 5 really worthy titles over the past 15 years, one of its most popular iterations is Bus Driver. Bus Driver was the Crazy Taxi of the simulation world, think of Bus Simulator 2008 as a more serious, less arcade styled game.
Without a doubt, Bus Simulator 2008 is wholeheartedly addictive and fun, and the only inconsistent part of the game is freeplay mode, which should let you drive around Megacity picking up passengers and dropping them off, however freeplay mode is simply driving around the town in a bus that is out of service. Unlike most sims Bus Simulator 2008 contains real people!! These pedestrians walk around, which you can also do with your bus driver if you wish, this makes the town far more alive than other simulators.
The editor works very easily, and gives you the Megacity map, and asks you to choose a start point that then follows waypoints and bus stops until your chosen end point. There is a limit of an extra 10 lines, as well as the ability to edit the 10 existing lines, giving you a total of 40 routes to play around with when considering that each line consists of 2 routes.
The 12 different buses available to you range from intercity ‘bendy’ buses, your average kneeling buses, and the more specialised shuttle buses and coaches for use in the 7 special tours. Each bus is carefully rendered and is the most impressive part of the game, however this is let down somewhat by the handling of the vehicles which results in a rather unrealistic looking, and feeling vehicle when you are driving the buses around. But when you consider that the only simulators to really achieve competent vehicle handling are SCS Software’s Truck simulators and Entwicklerteam Slaby’s Demolition Simulator, it is not a big issue, and does not detract away from the overall experience of the game.
A relatively original feature of Bus Simulator 2008 is the actions menu that allows players to access all the capabilities of their bus with a press of the space bar, this is possibly one of the handiest features ever available in a simulator, and works extremely well for using the bus doors, selling tickets and making announcements. However, where the actions menu is helpful in some areas, it is extremely bad for the use of general driving mechanics such as indicators and other split second controls, which makes the actions menu far too troublesome to use. It has been added in as more of a helping hand for players that have a hard time remembering the controls, and within a few hours you’ll have learnt the basic controls and not need the use of the actions menu.
If you thought Tow Truck Simulator had a lot of settings, you haven’t seen anything, Bus Simulator 2008 has your average core settings and more, not only can you choose to sell your own tickets, make your own stop announcements and choose whether you wish to see pedestrians, other buses and raise the price of your tickets, you’re even able to choose how much information announcements give.
Although it is said on the box that the Highway Code must be strictly adhered to, it goes without saying that in regards to other simulation titles that take place on roads, such as Driving Simulator, very little rules are present. You are of course required to stop at red lights, but you are not penalised in any sense for driving on the wrong side of the road, or for forgetting to indicate. In fact penalties are not treated as harshly as they usually are, and only affect the amount of money that you come away with at the end of a job; of which there is a general 90% failure rating, so if you are careful enough on the roads you will find that it barely affects you.
One of the few bad points of Bus Simulator 2008 is perhaps the loading; the game is required to load while driving in and out of the inner city, which takes a considerable amount of time each time it is required to load, there is a dynamic loading setting available for the game, so you needn’t wait through the loading screens in game, however even our fairly powerful computer couldn’t make it through dynamic loading, so do be weary if you decide to use it.
Rather than stretching into management like UK and German Truck Simulator have done recently, Bus Simulator 2008 sticks strictly to keeping you solely in control of your buses. Never will you hire other drivers, or make money from lines being run by other buses. Instead all the money you make, you make by yourself, you can buy all 10 bus lines, and all 12 buses, but you will only be able to ride one at a time. This does make it slightly more difficult to save up the money to afford many of the routes and buses from the start, but means you will work twice as hard when you want that better kneeling bus, or the coach that will let you finish that last special tour.
The game itself is fairly realistic in terms of buses, the inclusion of having to sell customers tickets is a nice addition; however one very unrealistic portion of the game, which may just be a British thing, but no way would so many bus passengers sit next to each other when empty seats are available.
That aside, the addictive qualities of becoming a bus driver may not be as obvious to all, but the game is definitely worth a play, even if you just want to spite your passengers by choosing not to visit their stops. Bus Simulator 2008 is one of the best bus simulation games to date; it may have a few issues, and is not as exciting as the arcade frolic of Bus Driver, but it keeps the addictive nature and quaint simulation of being a friendly bus driver, and is recommended to all simulation fans.
Bus Simulator will be available at all good retailers come June 25th, with an SRP of £24.99, if you loved Bus Simulator 2008 you’ll be blown away by Bus Simulator 2008, if you loved Bus Driver then you will be relatively pleased by this newest game in the Bus simulation genre.
System Requirements:
Pentium 1.7GHz or Similar
512 MB RAM
Video Card 128 MB
DirectX 9.0
Microsoft Windows XP/Vista/Win7
Microsoft 2 GB Hard Disk Space
Size: 714.82 MB
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