It doesn’t take long to unlock all of its stops and you will find yourself wishing for a new environment pretty early during your playthrough. The game only has one town in which you can operate. You get no reward for carefully planning out routes other than more money. I feel that the objectives serve no purpose other than to pad out the single player campaign. If you choose to edit a route later on to enhance efficiency, you must drive it again or your employees and buses will sit around losing your money. You have to personally drive each route that you assign to your subordinates or the game does not give you credit for completing those routes. Most of them make no sense from an efficiency standpoint and do little to enhance the experience other than bring you into new districts. All of these objectives are arbitrary routes that connect various bus stops. You are tasked with objectives from city officials that must be completed to expand your operation. I had some issues with the campaign design. Some of the lens flares from brake lights are incredibly aggressive, but it doesn’t harm the experience. Roads look like roads, cars finishes look right, etc. The lighting is good and reacts very well to varying surfaces.
Bus simulator 18 xbox one simulator#
Bus Simulator 18 runs on Unreal Engine 4 and gains some serious graphical muscle versus competing sim games. The town is fairly detailed and I found myself enjoying trips through it. Thankfully, most of these can be disabled, but then you are left with the simple loop. None of these situations is hard to deal with, just tedious busy work to make your route last longer. You will get loud passengers, idiots who won’t let the doors close, and subhumans who leave cups in the seats. I was never able to find a way to do this with the controller, so I had to constantly swap between mouse and pad operation. Some of your passengers will need to buy tickets and you must correctly enter their order onto your touch screen console and dish out their change. The worst of these diversions is the ticket selling mechanic. The developers added in some filler to break up the driving sections, though I found most of them to grow annoying after several hours of play. While the game has a solid driving feel, the main gameplay loop is very limited. The only time I found myself killing pedestrians or causing collisions was due to my own negligence or error, never because of the game’s design (with a couple of exceptions). I’ve played a few European shovelware sim games and Bus Simulator 18 is very much a cut above.
![bus simulator 18 xbox one bus simulator 18 xbox one](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/3wr7Oy3UQoQ/maxresdefault.jpg)
The game’s audio, visual, and control feedback did a great job of putting me in the driver’s seat. I used the Xbox One S controller exclusively, though the game supports keyboard and mouse input, as well as dedicated steering wheel setups. The game even has a few articulated buses to spice up the experience (and raise your maximum occupancy level). All the buses had a unique feel, weight, and turning radius. I only played with realistic and found it to work very well. The game offers player two distinct driving modes: simplified and realistic.
![bus simulator 18 xbox one bus simulator 18 xbox one](https://www.gtplanet.net/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/Bus_Simulator_18-1-1200x900.jpg)
While I’ve never been on a city bus (I live in a swamp and use a fan boat to get to the public library and post news everyday), the game sounds exactly what I’d expect a real bus to sound like. While I’ve never played Bus Simulator 16, one of the game’s loading screens proudly boasts that Bus Simulator 18 has over 1100 different bus sounds compared to just 55 in 16. The modeling work and interior details are pretty good. The game features licensed buses from a few different manufacturers.
![bus simulator 18 xbox one bus simulator 18 xbox one](https://img.gg.deals/d1/77/bf4c6878327a352614001a4547d80baadc6d_307xt176.jpg)
As you progress through the game’s campaign, you will unlock the ability to move into the various districts of the town until you are given permission by the city government to operate your business throughout the town. A small European town is your virtual bus playground. You are given the choice of a few outfits, hair colors, and other customizations. The game begins with the creation of a bus company and your avatar. While you start with a single bus and a single route, you can build you way up to a large operation with lots of busses and employees. Bus Simulator 18 give you the chance to operate your own bus company.