A Desire to Drive
stargrace In real life my anxiety has always prevented me from getting my full drivers license. I’ve had my beginners a few times but the idea of driving around a city just absolutely petrified me. This year I decided it was time to beat back that fear, and I once again have my beginners. The idea of driving still scares me, but the fact that we will soon be living so remote and I may not have my license scares me even more.
Anyway. With the real life driving taken care of (or at least decided upon) comes the odd fact that I have always really enjoyed driving games or racing games. I love Mario Kart, I enjoy speed racing type games and even though I have owned Euro Truck Simulator 2 for a little while now, for some reason I had never given the game a go! I watch quite a few streamers who play, and it always seems so relaxed and comfortable, two things that really appeal to me. Plus you get to explore and drive through some absolutely amazing places.
I decided since I’ll soon have two hands free to game (at least over Christmas break) that I’d like to give the game a shot and see if it’s as enjoyable to play as it is to watch. On the suggestion from (many) friends I plugged in my controller and have decided not to play with a keyboard / mouse. In fact if I enjoy it enough, I may even invest in a wheel.
I ran through a pretty quick tutorial, promptly forgetting everything they told me to pay attention to, and was on the road doing my first ‘mission’. I don’t actually own my own truck yet, I have to run missions and save up to buy one – which is awesome! It’s like earning your gear in an MMO. Anyway, my first trip out was… interesting. I forgot how to break, and I couldn’t turn my windshield wipers off. It was a nice bright sunny day in (where ever I was, I have no idea I was too excited to remember) and there I was, running into pretty much everything because I couldn’t slow down, and with the wipers going.
It was hilarious, relaxing, and I had so. much. fun. Now, I won’t be playing multiplayer any time soon – but I DO want to give that a go once I’m more comfortable driving. My reasons for not playing it right now are pretty straight forward, I’d probably ruin something for someone else with my really (REALLY) poor driving skills. So for now I’m doing the solo gameplay stuff. I don’t own any of the DLC but I do also want to pick those up over time, too. Right now thanks to the steam sale I could get everything I’m missing (and then some) for about $50 CAD. There are a ton of DLC for the game, it has been out a while after all.
It’s a beautiful game, too. Thankfully I have a navigation system in the truck so I can at least see where I’m going and if I need to do something special like move to one side of the road or something like that. As a non-driver, it’s really interesting to me to learn this stuff, and I can familiarize myself with street signs too.
I probably need to tweak my controller a bit (I’m using an xbox controller) and familiarize myself a bit more with the controls (like changing camera view so I can see what the hell is up with my trailer), but I’m thinking this is another one of those perfect games for me. I can’t wait to dive back in and play some more.
As always, happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself!