Euro Truck Simulator. I love these straight-to-the-point descriptors. Let's break that down, as the kids might say. Euro - that's European, giving us a location. Truck - that would be the method of conveyance one might expect to find within this game, and Simulator - creating an experience analogous of a real-life event.

As titles go, it's pretty much 'does what it says on the tin'. However, I feel a certain amount of artistic license has been applied in certain aspects of this particular game, which I will indubitably mention, in due course. First though, let us begin, as is tradition, with the premise.

You're a truck driver. You've been given/earned/won/stolen £100,000 with which to purchase your very own shiny 'big-rig'. You head over to the truck showroom - which is quite nicely presented; you can browse the various truck cabs and walk around the virtual showroom at leisure, without fear of being accosted by sales folk. Each truck is shown along with its stats to give you a feel for the type of thing you'll be driving, and there are three classes for each of the four makes, giving you something to work towards as you play. It's the 'C' class which will be available for purchase initially, these being the slowest and least luxurious models. But trucks aren't cheap, it would seem, and even the most affordable vehicle will leave you with little change from your starting capital. There are no customise options (not even a choice of colour), so upon choosing your dream machine, you're plonked in front of a loading bay ready to start building your empire. Truckin' aye!

You can begin your lucrative dealings in either France, Germany, Belgium, the UK, or several other European countries, and you're initially restricted in how far outside each country you can travel; after travelling from Manchester to Dover, I found that I couldn't cross over on the ferry until after I'd earned £52,000 (a seemingly arbitrary sum). This seems to be the only true goal in Euro Truck Simulator - amassing enough cash to expand your domain into each country.

I chose the UK as my original starting point, as the country I have spent most time in, both inside and outside the virtual, being, as I am, a true-blooded Anglophile. Bearing in mind the 'Simulator' part of the title, it would be reasonable to expect that the cities bore some resemblance to their real-world counterparts. This, sadly is not the case. Besides one moment in London when I espied the 'Gherkin' building far off on the distant horizon, along with its financial fellows, I noticed little to suggest that I had even travelled to a different area. Indeed, the three solitary cities (London, Manchester and Newcastle) available in England are so nondescript that you might be forgiven for thinking that you had taken a wrong turn somewhere. Likewise the scenery along the motorway network varies little and consists mostly of trees, the occasional white cliff, and numerous construction sites, suggesting that our sceptred isle is under the throes of some massive renovation project.

All of these things don't look particularly horrible, however. Visuals are acceptable, serving to give at least some impression of changing scenery, and the truck cab itself is meticulously detailed, even down to the minutiae of warning lights and windscreen wipers. There are some lovely rain effects, and night-time driving is a new challenge as you rely on your tiny headlights to guide your steel beast through the dark.

I took a brief sojourn to Europe to compare the different areas of the game, and began in Germany, delivering fruit from Berlin to Munchen. Besides the road signs being in some foreign language, possibly German, and the speeds being displayed in km/h instead of the 'correct' mp/h, I found little to distinguish this area from England. The scope of travel was wider, and I had to remind myself to drive on the wrong side of the road, but the scenery proved very similar.

But it's the driving that should be key in this sort of affair, and for the most part, this provides a solid, entertaining experience that has considerable 'time-sink' potential. It begins when you choose a loading bay and take a job - deliveries range from fruit and veg through ice-cream and even (once you've earned enough cash to get qualified) more dangerous items like petrol and the squidgy cheese found on McDonald's hamburgers. The licences needed to haul such items aren't cheap, and a lot of time is spent hauling less deadly goods around the country before you can earn enough to afford them, giving something of a goal in the early stages. After choosing a destination for said goods, it's time to attempt to pick up the trailer by reversing under the front of it. It's not as tricky as it might be in real-life, I expect.

And that's more or less the entirety of the game. You select a job, pick up a trailer and drive it to where it needs to be, at which point you get paid (minus any damages to the trailer itself, or penalties for poor driving). A handy on-screen marker reminds you where it's supposed to go, and a detailed map guides you there easily. This can also be turned off, leaving you to navigate using road-signs, which gives the true trucker experience, in my book. You get penalised for driving on the wrong side of the road, speeding, crashing into other vehicles and running red lights, but not for swerving erratically across multiple lanes or failing to indicate. You can only drive for 12 hours before needing a rest, and of course, you must keep a careful eye on your fuel reserves, lest you wind up stranded miles from your destination (although the, rather expensive, breakdown service will supply you with enough fuel to limp to the nearest garage, if needs must).

There's actually something satisfying about driving from London to Newcastle, stopping off at some seedy truck-stop and pulling over to rest for a few hours, before setting off again in the dead of night to escort your cargo safely home. There's a surprising amount of other traffic, too. In one hour of play I ended up being cut-up by another truck, slowed to a crawl in a traffic jam, and almost became the victim of an accident when I failed to indicate at a junction. Despite the lack of scenery and variation, there is enough going on to keep Euro Truck Simulator interesting, which the different camera views add to.

There's a traditional interior view, which affords the most realism (as well as the best sound effects - the clanks and rumbles of gears and mechanisms can be heard throughout your drive, as gears change and brakes are applied, giving a fairly immersive sense of being in a truck), as well as a top-down, Micro Machines style camera (most useful when parking or hitching a trailer) a wheel cam, and even a cinematic camera.

Even though there is no ultimate goal, there are various small events to work towards, by way of Perks - essentially Achievements. Perks are provided in the form of short-term goals, split into difficulty groups. Early perks might require you to play the game for an hour, deliver four different goods, or deliver two cargoes to the same loading bay. More difficult perks might require you to earn thousands of pounds or deliver multiple shipments without taking damage, etc.

But all in all, Euro Truck Simulator is not something I would consider a true simulation. The controls are too simplistic, the cities barely reflect their real-life opposites, the road network is a tad too watered down (leaving you with three or four motorway routes per country and several side roads) and the penalties for speeding or otherwise breaking the law too lax. This is more simulacrum than simulation - it serves to give an impression of a real environment, without committing to its creation.

However, there is something to be said for its basic charms. Driving across country is fun, there are enough different types of goods and locations to keep you coming back to play for an hour or so every now and again, and if you really work hard at it, you can access the whole of the large game world and drive right across its full area.

Despite not being a true simulation, and its uninspiring terrain and locations, Euro Truck Simulator gives anyone who likes trucks enough a fair few hours of fun. The trucks are rendered beautifully, the experience of long-distance driving is captured well, and all in all, Euro Truck Simulator provides a charming, yet basic, analogy of truck driving.

Reviewed by John Barnes for AceGamez (All Rights Reserved).