The license test, at least, gave me a better appreciation for the turning radius and braking distance, and they will vary, at least in feeling, based on the type of cab. I started the game by jumping right into a race at Slovakia and had no idea what I was doing. The tasks in the (unskippable) license test that begins the career mode may seem very ordinary, but they’re necessary. The trucks’ handling really is something to behold, but it takes a lot of acclimatizing. Strong racing in ETRC is supported by a lot of features that simply seem slapped on. That makes a fast start a high priority, and it’s where you’ll see most of the truck-on-truck crime. Late in the race, though, things will usually resemble an F1 event with a leader well out in front and then two clusters well back, held up by a defensive or just plain slow driver. By and large, you can be competitive from anywhere within the field, provided you have the right mixture of vehicle setup and driver aggression. It was discomfiting, though, to see an AI driver reset to track right in front of me on the Nurburgring, especially as I don’t have that option when I wipe out. They get too aggressive overtaking in turns, too, but weirdly timid when they have the chance beginning a straightaway, which is important because the trucks are speed-limited to 160 kph. I had worried that European Truck Racing Championship would give me opponents who raced with a perfect line at top speed throughout they don’t. The AI drivers do as well, and it’s important that they do when the races are largely defined by who has the fewest of these moments, rather than who has none of them. N-1 Racing/Bigben InteractiveĪnd I accept them, because I’m not the only one completely overshooting a turn or spinning out into a sand pit. Real-life drivers Steffi Halm (left) and Jochen Hahn (right) show up in the career mode, but they never take off their helmets in a series of badly canned animations. FIA European Truck Racing Championship forces me to accept imperfections and chaos. I am a very high-strung F1 driver, self-flagellating at the slightest deviation in racing line or mild squalling of the tires (sorry, tyres). There’s a downhill stretch, into a sweeping right, at the Hungaroring (yes, your truck actually races F1 circuits) where standing on the gas will feel flat irresponsible, even for a video game, to anyone who has driven a U-Haul. Cooling the brakes with a blast of water after a big hairpin is vital, although I never came close to running out my water tank even in a full-length race. Your brakes are going to howl so much that you’ll think you’re damaging the vehicle for sure. Racing a 5-ton semi delivers a sense of driving something beyond its limits in a way that delicate Formula One and macho NASCAR cars simply cannot illustrate in their video games. There is a distinct, understandable challenge to piloting one of the two types of big rigs in the game, and the trucks snarl and belch and whine with personality through every turn. Let’s start with the good news, though: The racing action is. But FIA European Truck Racing Championship, by N-1 Racing and Bigben Interactive, is so conspicuously stripped-down in some departments that it doesn’t inspire much hope that post-release support will make it a guilty pleasure worth defending. I was prepared for a no-frills, modestly budgeted piece of entertainment, in other words. I was drawn to FIA European Truck Racing Championship mainly because it looked like something unemployed people used to watch on ESPN at 2 o’clock in the afternoon, between the World’s Strongest Man and a darts tournament.
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