Review: Truck Driver the American Dream

Having played (and reviewed) Soedesco’s previous Truck Driver game, I was intrigued (and hesitantly a little excited) to experience their new current gen trucking title “Truck Driver the American Dream”…which I have to admit after playing it has pushed me to write a review dominated by the word “but“.

• TDtAD is better than the original Truck Driver game, BUT it is not a patch on SCS’s American Truck Simulator.
• The A.I. cars are better than in Truck Driver, BUT they are still bloody annoying and erratic.
• The horrendous graphical pop-in is better than the previous game, BUT it still exists…accompanied by worse frame rate stuttering that gets very annoying after not too long.
• The world and texture models are better than in Truck Driver, BUT they still come across as decidedly last-gen.
• The missions given to you are no longer handed out via slow text prompts on a crap looking iPad, BUT the actors now progressing the narrative sound like 2 of the most emotionless and completely bored people I’ve ever heard in a video game.
• The narrative is better than in Truck Driver, BUT I had zero interest in listening to whiny Nathan want to follow in the footsteps of his late father as a trucker.
• The interior of the truck looks better, BUT the handling veers between oversteering and understeering whenever the hell it likes.

So having said all of that, and much like the previous Truck Driver game, why have I not already uninstalled it from my Xbox? Is my penchant for enjoying bad movies ala: Samurai Cop, The Room, Hard Ticket to Hawaii etc spilling over into my gaming and keeping me invested in experiences that most others would turn off quite quickly? I don’t know!

What I do know though is that this (along with the 1st game) is quite a calming experience…yes, despite the annoying traffic and everything else listed above. Hitting the road (and plenty of A.I. cars too) and endlessly driving from point A to point B, all while keeping a (not so) close eye on my drivers fatigue level and the trucks fuel level, just seems to zone me out.

Now whether this is the intended purpose of the game, or if this would even be the same for you, is open to debate…I’m assuming most people would hit the delete button quite quickly.

However, with a 2023/24 roadmap for the game that includes the likes of new paint jobs (yes you can customise your truck), new jobs to do, new stories, new characters, and much more, I hesitantly expect this game to keep improving over the coming year or so.

Definitely not a game for everyone, and if you didn’t enjoy the previous Truck Driver game then I seriously doubt the incremental improvements here will make you enjoy this any more…but for some people it may well be a decent enough experience…especially with the planned stuff still to be added.

I still await though a console trucking experience that SCS gives me with Euro/American Truck Simulator.

Review by Dave from an Xbox code kindly supplied by Soedesco.