Scary true story. A week after ETS2 reversed, beeping, into my life, I collected a friend from a house in the middle of nowhere. We'd driven about a mile down a winding country lane when the friend enquired “Er, shouldn't you be on the other side of the road?” Days of whisking simulated cargoes along simulated continental highways had stealthily displaced a decade and a half of unsimulated British motoring experience. I veered to the left, and blurted a confession.
2012 has given us more detailed and plausible vehicles than ETS2's DAFs, Scanias and Volvos (the FSX and X-Plane add-on scene continues to spawn a steady stream of high-fidelity gems). It's given us lovelier landscapes (AeroFly FS springs to mind). What it hasn't managed to do is deliver a sim with more natural momentum, more innate randomness. Dynamic job offers, ever-changing traffic flows, and thousands of miles of hand-crafted tarmac are the ever-present rumble strips that keep Zen-like relaxation from turning into bleary-eyed boredom.
In a market awash with atrocious vehicle games masquerading as simulators, ETS2 risks being damned by association. “Budget price, unpromising theme? Think I'll stick to the winged wonders I know and love.” All those who do cross the road to avoid this articulated outsider are missing out on a sim as singular as it is soothing, as hypnotising as it is terminally unhip.
Read More: Euro Truck Simulator 2 review .
Runners Up: AeroflyFS, X-Plane.
