Truck drivers play an important part in American business.  They sacrifice a lot of creature comforts to get items we need from place to place.  And now you can experience some of what they deal with in Truck Simulation 19, available to download for mobile devices (reviewed on iPad here).

The first thing you’ll do is create your truck driver license and the look and gender of your driver.  You can choose to start with a tutorial and that’s where the problems with this game start, as the instructions here are downright awful.  They tell you in tiny text only what to do while you are driving, so you may miss something.  Spoken voice while this is going on would’ve been more helpful.  And they really should’ve focused on how to control your truck, as they don’t explain very well how to back up and hitch your trailer loads.  After backing up and pushing my trailer to a point where I couldn’t get to it, I restarted the tutorial three times before just skipping it and going onto the main game.  Which was better because I found it was a little easier to learn just by playing.

To add authenticity to the game, you can choose from real live truck brands such as Kenworth.  In the game you must pick a trailer load and haul it to its destination for money.  Luckily it’s easy to know where to go thanks to the GPS and arrows telling you exactly where to drive.  Unfortunately the bad play control rears its ugly head again here, too.  I know that trucks are supposed to be harder to drive and maneuver, but here it’s just plain awful, even with four different control options.  You can get stuck in turns, cars can pin you down (luckily they disappear), and it’s just not very much fun or best suited for mobile devices.  In the game you also have to watch out for your truck’s damage meter and make sure you rest at motels so your trucker won’t get tired.  And you must also monitor the business end and make sure you have enough money to do things.  But I doubt too many people will make it that far unless they are very patient.

After getting stuck and restarting, the game sent me back to the yard to pick up my trailer, and yet my truck still retained all the damage.  No thank you.  When I do my Game of the Year awards, I like to stay positive and only talk about the good games.  But if I had a Worst Game of the Year category, this would be on the list.  I don’t know if the 19 in the title stands for 2019 (then it should’ve been written with an apostrophe), or if there were 18 games before this, but if there were, I’d hate to see how those turned out.  If you want to play a fun trucker game, I’d recommend SEGA’s late 90’s/early 2000’s arcade classic American 18 Wheeler if you can track it down.

Kid Factor:

Nothing violent or objectionable here.  Reading skill is a must because of the text.  Younger players may get frustrated at the bad controls.  If your kids want to play with trucks, you’re probably better off getting them a real toy truck to play with.

Tags: Game Reviews