

What about Bus Simulator 21 then? Well, its a game that is surprisingly more in-depth than someone picking up this title might think, and depending on your tastes, this could be either a positive or a negative.īus Simulator 21allows players to get into the nitty-gritty of not just driving your bus from point-to-point but also the minutia of running a bus company, from bus selection to route planning and even organising your fleet of busses to cater for the demand around the city. Many might look at games of this type and scoff, but they absolutely have a place in the gaming landscape, and for someone like me who suffers from periodic bouts of anxiety, having a game that allows you to turn off and zone out for a few hours can prove an invaluable tool. There’s something incredibly relaxing about spending a day at work being stressed and overstretched and then wiling away the evening chatting with friends or listening to music or a podcast while you hit the open road and unwind. Flights sims, truck sims, farming sims and even train driving sims have all found their own corner of the market, with rabid fans dedicating hundreds of hours to games that on the face of it seem to merely be boredom simulators, but play them I do, and popular they are. But as much as I enjoy this genre, I’m equally as baffled about the sheer size and profitability of this niche that appears to be growing by the day as I am intrigued by it. Almost everybody dresses really strange and looks like they’ve fallen through a jumble sale with no clothes and a fiver and come out with whatever was left at the bottom of the box, which, judging by the hair choices, was lots of bright paint.Caveat: It should be known that everything I’m about to say here is affected by the fact that I play and enjoy my fair share of simulator games, and on a Friday evening, I can often be found hovering around Discord with a drink in hand, chatting with friends and driving from Aberdeen to Norway in Euro Truck Simulator. If I had to describe the dress sense of the population, it would be muggles. The cities and their residents are another thing. Sure, most of them are honest, but there are more than a few fare-dodging scumbags and I sniffed them out… at the cost of timeliness. I’d notice the familiar stop buttons and seat arrangements of the European models as I’d run up the gangway and tell some muppet to move out of the way of the door, or to question every single passenger who didn’t buy a ticket. Where I felt let down by Bus Simulator 21 is where I always tend to the tecnicals and presentation.Īs always, the inside of the buses are immaculately detailed. It takes some getting used to but I adapted quickly enough to not bankrupt my fledgling bus company with an army of crippled victims in my wake.

I even hit a few old ladies with my bus thanks to misjudging how the hefty machine manoeuvres. The driving model is good but not perfect and I would often incur lots of fines for silly things like hitting the curbside or twatting a signpost when I was sure I was coming in right on the bend. It’s not all easy, though.Ĭreating routes with specific demands can be time-consuming and fiddly with a gamepad, especially with the need to balance peak times and demand, and that’s before you’ve driven the route, scored well, and then added another machine and worker to the fleet to work the route for you.ĭriving around is good fun, though, if you find this kind of thing fun. While the under-the-hood stuff is daunting at first, I appreciated that the game did hold my hand for a long time and guide me with constant “quests” that levelled me up, got me funded, and taught me the basics of managing my bus empire.


Is it too much to ask for an office away from the actual office? Like, another simulation inside a simulation? I guess they’re saving that to add to the wall of weird at Saturn. For those wanting to really get into the nitty-gritty, there’s a lot going on away from the comfortable cabin, though we’re still yet to get an office to work from.
