Savior Gaming

Truck and Logistics Simulator is one of many simulator games I have played over the years,and I am grateful for Aerosoft tossing me this one to review on PS5.

First,while you can get this on PC, I won’t be comparing this to other PC titles. I only played this on PS5, and with the limited amount of games in the genre you get to choose from on console I always find it silly when people say hey a game is ok but there’s better on something you probably can’t play on.

  The idea here is pretty simple. You will start with a small vehicle that you can do some basic customizing to. (mine was a bright purple mini van sort of deal because I like the ridiculous) Then you can go places to pick up jobs where you will be tasked with loading up your fan,or trailer using various tools such as a forklift at the start. Then driving from point A to point B and delivering them for money. Repeat this until you can buy more impressive vehicles like box trucks, a sports car, semi trucks or a monster truck. Yes,I do mean monster truck with giant wheels usually used in an arena to crush cars.

  Graphically the game is unimpressive, most of these games however are. The things it does well however are pretty nice. Outside of some clipping graphics when getting on and off the highway everything is stable including the FPS. I never noticed cars disappearing or suddenly appearing either, which is something I have noticed on other titles like this when it comes to console releases.

Hitting stuff is rather mundane however, general damage is pretty much always the same to cargo and vehicles and don’t expect to go cannon balling through traffic and watching them go flipping down embankments. Don’t get me wrong, you can knock cars out of your way but they mostly just roll out of the way.

The sound is also nice,nothing special,but nice. I liked listening to my engine roar on my new semi as I went down the road and my breaks squealing because I decided to slam on them at the last possible moment was a cheap thrill I enjoyed.

I do have several minor complaints. For example there is an option to turn off traffic violations,which is awesome. But you can and will still get speeding tickets. And even with traffic violations on,I never noticed using turn indicators (blinkers for some Americans on the east coast) means nothing. I stopped using them and never got a ticket. A legal system that you can turn on and off that never matters if you do or not seems pointless.

Another issue I had unless I missed something,the only way to know about speed limits was to read the actual signs on the road, which are not universal. UK speed limit signs look vastly different from American ones which look totally different from the ones in Canada (in terms of shape and design. Despite popular belief most Americans understand the metric system and KPH) so a little thing in your dashboard that said the current speed limit like many other games would have been nice.

The news isn’t all bad however,for example I love that you can skip loading up your cargo if you want and the punishment for doing it may as well not even exist. The map is also a nice size, but the variety of jobs is done in such a way that if you want a 5 minute drive or 30 minute drive in real time, you can find a mission for you quite easily. It also isn’t a simulator lite game, but at the same time you won’t get bogged down in things like having to drive back to your garage to switch vehicles if you see a job you want. I appreciate a game that respects my time but is also willing to let me waste hours of my life if I want.

Here is where I may disagree with a lot of other reviewers. The game is 29.99, and offers a full game experience online as well as offline. Anything you have in one mode is available in the other, and you can happily play and work with other people or just watch and see what they are doing,like flipping off a bridge with a trailer full of cargo. (Real thing I saw) This one is definitely worth a buy and is an 8/10 simulator, possibly the best on console. So enjoy,and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

When I first saw this game by Thunderful Group and The Station,it had my interest. A trailer or two later and it definitely had my attention. Then came the fateful day I got an email saying they would be happy to supply me with a review code, and that made me very happy and grateful. It also made my girlfriend very unhappy.

See Steamworld Build seems like a simple and straightforward game. You pull up on a wagon with your little robo people and a mysterious ball talking on the back of the wagon, get a short bit comprehensive tutorial and find all the pieces to a rocket to launch yourselves into space.

And honestly, the game is technically that simple. On the surface you will build basic buildings, a warehouse, farms, charcoal kilns etc. These will keep your robo people happy and functional. It is also quite in depth with how it is done, but not so in depth that it drags. Simply build a wood cutter near trees and they will chop them down and move them to the warehouse. From there they will go to a kiln or logger etc and they will become charcoal or planks.

From there you move onto the underground section. This is where all the mining takes place where you can find different materials and even locate the rocket parts.

Down in the mines you will create different places for different robots to live, whether they be minors, guards or other things you need. There are multiple levels or biomes down here and each time you find 2 rocket parts you can move down to the next level. Each level gradually gets harder and it never feels unfair. Even the enemies on each level grow stronger,with the first level not even seeming to have any just to ease you into the experience.

Each new material underground will help you build new things and robots above ground,these will help you get further down into the mines. The whole thing is very well done and interconnected in a way that is a master class in how it should be done.

My only real complaint is that as you get new robots above ground is that you don’t build new ones, you upgrade old ones. Workers become engineers, engineers become aristocrats and those become scientists. Each new class has new requirements of things they want to live near and have access to. This made me feel like I was constantly rebuilding and rearranging my town. This wasn’t game breaking or killing my fun at all, it was just kind of annoying when I really wanted to be in the mines.

Now I haven’t really touched in the sound or graphics, and that’s because nobody expects a game like this to break new ground in these departments. The game looks good and the sound is great. I never got sick of hearing the train come in and each level of the mine had its own sights and sounds to enjoy.

The controls however will make it break this type of game traditionally on consoles,but in recent years companies have been nailing them. Steamworld Build is no exception,the controls won’t please mouse and keyboard purist, but nothing on console will. They felt great to me however,and if that’s a concern of yours this felt like one of the best to ever do it.

This game is just fantastic,9/10. I spent hours ignoring my family just to play it. Ok maybe that’s a bit of a stretch, but it wasn’t because I didn’t want to, they simply wouldn’t let me. Best wishes and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

Whisper Games was kind enough to toss me a review copy of this one, and damn am I glad they did. It has gotten great reviews over on Steam and many other places, but I had never really heard of this action RPG with gameplay that reminded me a lot of Act Raiser.

It’s side scrolling with pretty simple button commands. Move left or right, a button to jump another to swing your sword or dodge it block and use magic is as simple as hold this button and tap a direction a few times.

These easy controls make the game far from easy easy,in fact I ended up turning the difficulty down from hard to normal. Still I don’t recommend simply running around trying to stab things with no strategy.

Another fun addition to the game is creating weapons and items from the enemies you kill. This will let you create a variety of things instead of buying them exclusively from shops. Unfortunately on the flip side, you need both money and materials to get new weapons and such from shops and that always bothers me.

All of that aside though the story is where this game really shines. It starts off with you waking up with no real memory in a cabin with a talking bird. Eventually you will leave to search for people, it will take 8 years before you finally find people. This will set off a chain of events that will send you through time itself to discover more about yourself and the other characters.

I won’t say more than that because the story is stellar, but these graphics are spectacular and the sound serves its purpose well. While it isn’t perfect by any means the setting is helped when in caves or a forest.

My biggest complaint,if you can truly call it that, was I don’t feel the level up system was explained very well. Sure you go from level one to two etc, but you also collect bonus items to increase different stats but how you get them and why just felt tacked on. It’s simple enough to figure out but some sort of deeper explanation would have been nice.

The game however is a must play for fans of the genre, 8/10 easily. Best wishes and may the gaming gods bring you glory.