War Truck Simulator – Review
Normally one would expect that a simulator game stands for quality, yet some just slap the word in the title and call it a day. Some may argue that job simulator games don’t always boast the nicest graphics but compensate with advanced gameplay. War Truck Simulator is a game that shits on all these morals and is something that belongs in the trash bin.
Story
You are an aspiring truck driver for the military and you get your driver’s license during your time in boot camp. After you pass the tests, you get sent into hostile areas where you must help fellow soldiers get into safety by maneuvering through the treacherous forest and mountain passes. Game objectives are updated through messages in the game, albeit with a decent number of errors in them. With the developers originating from Poland, we can understand that there are a few grammatical errors here and there, but they do become quite noticeable at times. Furthermore, there is zero development or backstory of why you are in various places around the world. The second issue with the updates in the game is that, if you reload an older mission, it seems that you don’t get the objective prompts anymore, making it hard to pick up later or replay it the way you’d like.
Graphics
The Switch isn’t a massive powerhouse, but the graphics in War Truck Simulator feel like they came from those cheap homebrew PC games you bought over the counter in the early 2000s. The maps are empty and bland, trees and objects constantly pop-in and the overall quality is nowhere to be found. Your simple U.I. takes 25% of the screen, while your large boxy truck takes the rest. Sometimes it is hard to navigate as you barely see anything while maneuvering through narrow paths. An easy fix would be to allow for a view from the driver’s perspective.
Sound
In a simulator game, you would expect some good audiovisual feedback when things happen around you. Sadly the only things served in WTS are a few bland and boring songs with random sound effects that are barely noticeable. The music is presented in very short loops and it gets annoying to hear the same damn song over and over again after your fifth try to complete the same mission. Another annoyance is that the engine stalls quite quickly and this is because you barely hear the engine running, let alone hear fluctuations in the RPM.
Gameplay
War Truck Simulator is a self-proclaimed simulation game but the only thing it simulates is how to get a brain aneurysm. Everything about this game is downright bad and unplayable. The frustration starts in the tutorial mission where you get to learn how the truck works. At first, it feels like playing a cheap mobile game or a driving game from the 1980s. Moving your vehicle on a flat surface isn’t too bad; it all starts going to hell the moment you have to go offroad. Your truck handles like it has a welded suspension, making it handle like a brick on ice. The tires don’t grip and braking is worse than trying to footbrake a motorcycle going downhill. Adding insult to injury, the truck in this game only has a front-wheel drive. While not entirely unrealistic, 99% of military trucks prefer either rear-wheel drive or all-wheel drive. Due to only the front wheels being powered, it means that you will get stuck, a lot, in the worst possible times. You could always teleport yourself to safety, but this feature proves more of a hassle than a real rescue.
Your main objective is to complete missions for the army, which sounds easy, but with the overall mechanics being extremely poorly handled, it will become a chorse. Not only will you have to dodge enemy fire, landmines and boobytraps, but your biggest enemies are also the falling trees that seemingly attack you on sight. It is unsure how these trees can damage your car this badly but after only a few scratches, your engine starts to smoke and it won’t take long before it completely breaks down.
Controlling the game is an absolute nightmare. Those who programmed the controls probably never have played video games at all, because there is a lot of wasted potential. You move the truck with your left stick, this means both steering, gas, braking and reversing. If you have to slowly turn into a corner then you will have sore thumbs after a few tries, therefore the movement is very slow and annoying. You could always use the emergency brake with the left trigger but this only works from time to time. The gearbox is taken straight from some old clunker that only works when it feels like it. They advertise it as an automatic gearbox that you can control manually, but when switching to manual the engine seems to stall at the most random of moments.
Content-wise there are only five levels, plus the tutorial. The maps aren’t that big, but because driving is a full-time job, it will take many tries to make any kind of progress. The difficulty is pretty hardcore, as one minor mistake means redoing the whole entire mission again, making the experience really frustrating because the shoddy handling can throw your truck in the water, crash it or destroy it with ease.
Conclusion
War Truck Simulator is a game that should be punished for using stolen valor. There is nothing that makes it earn the title of ‘simulator’ at all. The graphics are bad, even for the lower graphical standard of the Switch, On top of that, the sounds are bland, accompanied by a boring soundtrack and the game has nothing appealing for you to actually come back to this abomination at all. Having to control the truck is harder than driving a real one from the Second World War, and even if you manage to get past the first levels, you’ll only end up with PTSD.
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