It’s been just over ten years since I reviewed a game called Bus Driver on the PC, and apparently there is something about the blue-collar concept of driving a bus that has endured with the gaming culture for over a decade. Who am I to judge – they still have yearly truck driving sims too. Bus Simulator 18 takes the concept to the ultimate extreme in both behind-the-wheel and behind-the-scenes strategy management for operating your own successful public transportation company, and is even bold enough to assume you have friends with their own aspirations of driving buses that will play with you online.
Aside from the opening tutorial test drive and a few guided missions after, Bus Simulator 18 pretty much presents you with an open world with which you can craft the bus company of your dreams. You get to pick and choose your buses, plan your routes for optimum efficiency and profit and even hire/fire your own staff. There is an unprecedented amount of customization available in designing your own company logos and skins for the buses as well as plenty of modding opportunities thanks to Steam Workshop support.
I had a few issues with the game; the most critical being controls. I was impressed that Bus Simulator 18 actually supports most popular wheels, but I chose to play with my Xbox controller which has far too few buttons to accommodate all the possible commands required to play. You’ll definitely need to keep a keyboard handy, even to get past simple tutorial commands like hitting X to use the passenger mirror. While I did enjoy the analog steering and triggers for gas and brake it’s ultimately simpler to just stick with keyboard and maybe mouse steering. About 60 minutes into the game my controller stopped responding entirely and I had to start a new game to get it working again.
Bus Simulator 18 is heavy on the “simulation” with a checklist of actions so lengthy you’ll think you’re piloting a Boeing 747 instead of a Mercedes Citaro K. Parking brakes, lights, turn signals, ignition switch, front and back door toggles, and even a cash machine to sell tickets and make change. Whatever happened to the days of EXACT CHANGE? And then you have the random actions like dropping the bus down for a wheelchair rider or yelling at a slowpoke passenger blocking the back door. Keyboard shortcuts and a radial menu pop-up help make things flow smoothly once you learn them all.
Once you hit the road you can drive from behind the bus or from super-detailed cockpit views with interactive controls. This slightly makes up for the lack of controller buttons but trying to zoom in and hit switches with the fast-moving analog cursor is troublesome and wastes valuable time when you are trying to stick to a schedule that is constantly haunting you with the digital timer ticking away in the corner. The driving part is honestly pretty boring, and you seldom get out of third gear unless your route takes you out of the city. Otherwise, it is stop and start and countless intersections or trying to merge into a roundabout. What really threw me is that traffic stops and starts but I could never see lit signals, so I was just going with the flow and hoping I didn’t get T-boned when I pulled out into the intersection. I highly recommend toggling the side mirrors to “On all the time”, so you can actually see when it’s safe to pull out of a bus stop.
There is a lot of situational driving including weather effects, night and day routes, and surprises like road construction, detours, traffic jams, and other delays that will threaten your timer. Trouble can occur within the bus as well with punks who try to skip paying, kids playing loud music, passengers littering up the bus, and people demanding special treatment. And when you finally do get to park the bus at the end of the day you still have all the paper work and financial management to take care of to keep the buses running the following day.
I was honestly surprised that such a seemingly mundane job could be turned into a challenging and slightly entertaining game. The multifaceted elements of keeping a public transportation company running are nicely balanced and the tension of sticking to a budget and making a profit are only equaled by the tension of getting caught in a construction site when you’re already behind schedule for your next stop. But ultimately, the game often feels more like work than play, which seems counterintuitive to why we play games in the first place.
The presentation is excellent with scalable graphics to suit most any modern hardware. I was running a GTX 1080i so I was able to crank this game to Ultra with no issues. Framerate was seldom an issue, even in the more complex skylines or in heavy traffic since you are seldom going above 35mph. There are a lot of diverse areas that blend city and rural areas and enough variety in traffic and environmental textures to keep things from getting repetitive. There are plenty of realistic sound effects for bus operations as well as tutorial dialogue and random passenger chatter/requests to seal the immersion, and the background elevator-style music didn’t get too annoying.
If you’ve ever dreamt of driving a bus then you need better dreams, but seriously; Bus Simulator 18 is probably as close as it gets to the real thing, especially with the inclusion of every mundane task associated with operating a bus from behind the wheel to keeping the company alive back at the station. There is so much to do that for those who choose to seriously sink themselves into the simulation, you will find untapped hours of entertainment, and if you have friends who share the dream, you can all hook up in multiplayer and try to help out each other’s company. The only thing missing is driving a school bus route and that would be some easy DLC.
Bus Simulator 18 is a fun ride for a niche audience that just wants a game where they can kick back and relax, unless you are prone to stress or road rage or despise racing a clock. While the actual driving can become a methodical and somewhat routine exercise, some of the situations ramp the anxiety, but that’s when Bus Simulator 18 actually gets challenging. It’s a hard sell at $35 but certainly worth a spin when it goes on sale.
