Proceed with Caution with Bus Driver Simulator 18

By: GeekyGamerGirl87

https://youtu.be/Udr6UoWhMQ4

Developed and published by KishMish Games, Bus Driver Simulator 18  is an early access game that should ideally be a game that allows for you to be in the role of a bus driver. However, the game sadly does fall short of the experience that it should provide.

It should be known, that I did give the game multiple tries and I did really want the game to work out because I do love simulation games, as they are very relaxing. However, I would like to thank KishMish Games for providing me with a copy of the game for free to play, so that I could write the review. Let it be known that this is still an early access game, so hopefully a lot of the issues that I am going to describe will be worked out in the future.

The main objective of the game from what I was able to grasp is that you take on the role of a bus driver, and you must drive through towns and complete bus routes. Any fines  you may rack up will come directly from the bus fares you collected. For me, I was really looking forward to this because I enjoy playing simulators. I do find them to be very relaxing, but I did not find relaxation with Bus Driver Simulator 18 and although I gave it multiple chances it just wasn’t the game I was hoping it would be.  The game does offer a VR mode. However, it should be noted that I played the game in its non-VR mode.

I thought that the graphics of the game were okay for a simulation game. It wasn’t over the top and it wasn’t exactly mediocre.  It looked pretty good and that made me more excited to play. However, the controls for the game are bad. You can play with keyboard/mouse, gamepad, and steering wheels/pedals. For the sake of this review I was able to play with keyboard/mouse, and gamepad. I initially started the game off with gamepad. The issue with the gamepad is that you cannot reconfigure the controller entirely, and eventually you run out of buttons on the controller, so it directs you to using the keyboard. Instead of telling you what buttons to use on the controller, it simply just says “joystick button 1, etc.” which makes it in my opinion a little harder to play with controller if you don’t know which joystick button is which.

Therefore, when it comes to controller I would like that instead of “joystick button 1” it would actually say “A button” so that you don’t have to play the guessing game with what controls do what. However, again there is the issue that you do run out of buttons on the controller as not all the buttons can be used, and so it redirects you to keyboard. I did find the game a little bit more enjoyable with keyboard/mouse . If you are planning on getting the game and will be playing the non-VR mode, I highly recommend that you play with keyboard/mouse. I imagine that the steering wheel/pedals might be a great option for this, but again if not then it’s really going to be keyboard/mouse.

Another issue with the game was its tutorial. It took me at least four attempts to get through the tutorial, as a lot of the tutorial was a tad bit confusing to me. I will admit some of the tutorial I simply just forgot how to do things, so it took me a little bit longer. Once, I was able to finally get through the tutorial I was excited, because now I was going to finally be able to play the game.

However, when I moved on to my first town and route, the game froze up and stopped me from playing. I was a little disappointed but decided that maybe I had the graphics settings turned up a little high. So, after tweaking the graphics and dropping it from 1600 x 900 to 1280 x 720, the game not only crashed but shut down my computer as well. Luckily, nothing major had happen to my PC, but that was enough for me to not try for a third time.

Overall, I cannot say that I recommend Bus Driver Simulator 18 in its current state. Again, the game is in early access and has been since January 31, 2018. So, I will go on to say that it offers thirteen achievements that you can collect and even offers trading cards. However, because of the issues that I personally had with it, I don’t think that I will be playing anytime soon until they do a major patch for the game.  Now again I was playing the non-VR mode of the game. It maybe better on VR than it is for non-VR. However, if you’re not going to play VR. I would stay away from the game until they get the bugs worked out, and maybe get it when it leaves early access. If you would like to play and experience Bus Driver Simulator 18 for yourself, you can purchase an early access copy on Steam for $9.99 USD.