18 Wheels of Steel: Across America
Description official descriptions
The fourth game in the Hard Truck series features you as a trucker who is building his business to an empire. A true trucking simulation in which you can control up to 15 different trucks travelling up to 80mph. You haul from over 30+ different type of products across 1000 miles of highways from the 48 continuous states. The game comes with prebuilt scenarios and a free mode in which you must build up your trucking empire. Gameplay is very realistic as you travel through many highways and inner city roads transporting your goods, while trying to avoid accidents and paying caution to weather, traffic and the police. It's a true lifelike driving experience in which you have to watch your fuel tank, damage, turn on headlights during the night, and even avoid falling asleep at the wheel. Game maps are huge and simulate many different major and inner highways across the U.S. Also, while driving you see major sites, like seeing the Golden Gate bridge as you travel in California, or the bright lights of Vegas. Plus you can add your own driving music to the jukebox. At the Game Map, you'll see the cities of the US. Plus you will see the highways.
Spellings
- 18 Стальных колёс: Покорение Америки - Russian spelling (Akella release)
- 18 стальных колес: По дорогам Америки - Russian spelling (Buka Entertainment release)
- 18轮大卡车:穿越美国 - Chinese spelling (simplified)
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Screenshots
Promos
Credits (Windows version)
23 People (18 developers, 5 thanks)
Production | |
Programming | |
Art | |
Additional Art | |
Language Assistance | |
Production | |
Special Thanks to Game Testers |
Reviews
Critics
Average score: 78% (based on 3 ratings)
Players
Average score: 3.8 out of 5 (based on 10 ratings with 1 reviews)
Evolution comes in a truck!!!... and races at a dazzling 20mph!!!
The Good
If I'm not mistaken this must be the third episode in the Hard Truck series.
Here we have a nice expansion of the playing map that was available in Hard
Truck 18 Wheels of Steel (HT18WOS from now on), other enhancements include
a better interface and handling of the extra drivers that your company occupies. The driving (or should I say hauling??) controls and feel remain the same as HT18WOS, but a few major improvements are present in this section aswell: for instance in this game you don't need to wait for half an hour till your truck reaches
10mph from a full stop. Once you push the pedal to the metal the truck flyes ahead. Ofcourse now your truck driver has more personality than the yawning guy
that was the driver in HT18WOS. In this game you can communicate with other
trucks that are in the near vincinity, a nice little addition that adds a bit
of realism. Also you can play the game in 4 different modes, each in it's
own difficulty. Finally the truck variety has increased a bit.
The Bad
Apart from the minor additions and the expansion of the virtual road world
the game remains in the same basic lines of HT18WOS. Once you've aqcuired enough money to buy and try every truck in the game, there's little to be expected
from there on. In the graphics section there's no progress at all. All the same
medium-quality 3D objects in HT18WOS can be found in this game aswell, it
seems to me that apart from the trucks and layout no other effort was done
to graphically enhance the game.
The Bottom Line
So basically the HT18WOS across America is simply an enhanced version of the
HT18WOS and in my opinion it should have been released as an expansion pack
or a major patch rather than a separate title. It seems to me that the
developers of the Hard Truck series have done a good step in the right
direction here, perhaps the developers have read my review (!!!! NOT!!!) in
HT18WOS, but there's still more to be done. I'm afraid that this title
won't avoid the small interest curve that it's predecessor had. It will
keep you excited for some days but after a while gets a bit boring and
predictable. There's little to be expected from there on.
Now, unless you had great time with HT18WOS and was one of your most fave games of all time, I wouldn't recommend this one to most driving sim fans.
Also check out the reviews in HT18WOS and you'll have a more clear direction to the game.
Windows · by SifouNaS (1309) · 2004
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Official Site - Valusoft
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Contributors to this Entry
Game added by The Ring Hawk.
Additional contributors: tarmo888, 梦迪 高, Klaster_1.
Game added September 20, 2003. Last modified March 24, 2024.