American Truck Simulator
Overview
My last outing with American Truck Simulator was a bit of a bust. Can it be redeemed?
Review
While I've played ATS before, I wanted to give it another chance with "Project Road Trip" (the Ford DLC), which gives you a real car to drive instead of handling a truck and all that entails.
When I initially reviewed American Truck Simulator, my computer was somewhat antiquated and one time it frame skipped enough that I found my truck veered off on the side of the road on the opposing lane of traffic. This is perhaps the most unrealistic aspect of the game—anything like that in real life would be a horrific accident...and of course, with that sort of thing the immersion is lost. On a later run, however, on a new computer, I did try it again and things went swimmingly. My truck was still rather slow, of course—in addition to handling issues, California (base game only comes with Arizona and California, the rest are paid DLC products) restricts speed on commercial trucks to 55 mph. You could push it to 60 mph, but I live in an area where outside of urban areas the speed limit is 75 mph. Once I mashed a cruise control button and continued down the freeways, it felt amazingly comfy and reminded me of the parts around San Antonio and points beyond, which was nice. Unusually, I encountered no heavy traffic the entire way. I get that no one wants to be virtually stuck in traffic (and this is perhaps where that Austin part is most unrealistic) but sometimes being a trucker is reacting to the traffic around you. My journey came to an end when I pulled into a "Wallbert" distribution center around the Arizona border just as the sun was about to set (the Wal-Mart Distribution Center in New Braunfels is hard to miss, and the relation wasn't lost on me)...until it came time to back into a truck bay, which I struggled to do...and all that nice feeling went away. (That's why I only have a "C" class license in real life, I guess.)
While my previous experiences with ATS have been somewhat of a mixed bag, experience wise, I eventually learned that there was a learning curve to the game's physics and was able to pull off a trip with no damage to my car or cargo.
Having gone on a few road trips (by car) with American Truck Simulator I at least understand why it's not 1:1, there were parts of Florida or Iowa that were tearfully boring and I lacked enough knowledge with the route to appreciate it or know how close I was getting. (You can get the feel for that if you travel a route enough times).
Besides the physics engine not being as agile as one would like (just see what happens if you ram into a railroad gate), I think my biggest problem is just that there's no identifiable landmarks. There's only generic fast food places, some of which clearly are supposed to be something else (there's a screenshot in this article with "Driver" that was a takeoff on Pilot), but that was taken out of the final game...at least there's "Pedro"). The first time I played in the early 2020s I remembered seeing a "Ray's Hamburgers" sign in Los Angeles, which was directly modeled after old Burger Chef signage. The chain, once one of the biggest competitors to McDonald's, disappeared years ago (the last Burger Chef closed in 1996 and CKE Restaurants Holdings (last owner of Burger Chef and current operators of Hardee's/Carl's Jr.) still makes attempts to control the Burger Chef trademarks, so why not have it here? (Not to mention it was highly dated).
Most of the mods that try to correct this aren't good from what I'd previously seen, as some of these things are modeled (I know there's an obvious yet obfuscated Starbucks stand-in somewhere in there) and can't easily be changed with a poorly-rendered texture. (I might get lucky, but from what I've seen I wasn't impressed).
Still, I'm playing with it and I might end up getting the Texas DLC if it goes on sale again, despite knowing what's not there and that I kind of wanted to see (my hometown, that is, College Station, along with Highway 6, Northwest Freeway, the Houston loop roads, Katy Freeway with its five lanes in each direction, the MoPac Expressway where trains will often rumble through the median, the 85 mph Austin bypass, and more)...and maybe Louisiana as well. Sounds fun, they even include Avery Island with Not-Tabasco. (Would've been amazing if they could actually work out some branding to have real Tabasco sauce in it, if you actually visit Tabasco they have a TV playing with references to Tabasco sauce in movies or the visibility of its distinctive bottle).
Another time, I suppose...
Player Notes
When I rated American Truck Simulator on the previous version of this page, I had rated it as "Meh". I'm not sure anymore. It is very much an "acquired taste" video game. My most recent go of it was in early October 2026, before that it was around 2022, and before that, 2021. I think I first played the demo around 2017. The screnshots below are all from the official developer.
As of this writing (October 4, 2026, ten-four, good buddy), they've announced a British Columbia DLC. I wonder if the idea to eventually let you drive all the way to Alaska and the Dalton Highway.
Port & Rerelease Notes
Wikipedia lists the game available for Microsoft Windows, macOS, Linux, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X/S. I don't know when the console ports got theirs, or restrictions on DLC.
Screenshots
