Stay between the lines. Signal when you turn. Don’t run any red lights. Stop exactly where you are supposed to stop. Don’t mash the brakes too hard. Don’t hit anything.
Sound like a nightmare driver’s education instructor? Well, it may just be Bus Driver, the new simulation game that puts you behind the wheel of some of the largest vehicles on the road. And since these vehicles are often filled with living passengers, learning how to control them properly is a must if you want to try and drive one.
Bus Driver is much more of a simulation than an actual game, and certainly more sim-like than almost any title we have looked at in the past year. And when you look at it like that, it’s actually pretty good. Had you signed up for a crash course on how to drive a bus and you found this sitting there on your first day of class, you would feel pretty darn good. It would be a cool way to pass the time and pick up the art of driving. However, as a game that is presumably being played for fun and relaxation at home, it falls a little short of the mark. But let’s look at what it does well first.
You start off driving a school bus in a fairly easy scenario. I am not sure why packing a vehicle full of kids is the best way to train a new driver, but at least the missions are easy here. You basically have to drive on mostly flat terrain and pick up some kids waiting at a couple bus stops.
Here you will quickly learn the rules of the road. If you cross the center line, a warning will come up in red saying that points are being deducted from your score. If you can’t stop in time and have to back up to get the kids, the same thing happens. If you brake too hard and the passengers become uncomfortable, well, same thing. So in these first couple missions you will learn what you should and should not do while driving.
If you beat a level with a good enough score, then new levels will open up to you with greater challenges. You might find yourself driving a double decker bus, a commuter bus in rush hour traffic or even motoring prisoners from the jail to the courthouse. You will be driving in all types of weather and at different times of day and night as well.
The more I played this game the more it reminded me of an old title Microsoft published called Train Simulator. That game (or simulation to be more accurate) taught you how to drive a train. It was so detailed that The Washington Post, whom I was working with at the time, wanted to send me on the real Washington to New York Amtrak route with a laptop running the simulation to see if the landmarks all matched up, as well as the three hour trip time. That idea eventually got dropped, but I still think it could have been done given that the game was that accurate.
But Bus Driver is not really accurate, at least to that degree, in terms of the real world. You are driving around in a fictitious city with no landmarks that correspond to the real world. It would have been really cool if they used, say, a real map of New York and had you follow actual bus routes. But alas, you must drive around in nondescript landscapes that look okay, if a bit dated. Again, for a simulation things are fine, but compared to almost any other driving game, Bus Driver is behind the curve graphically.
If you are one of those "color in the lines" type of people, Bus Driver might be fun. There is real skill involved in trying to run your route perfectly, something that is almost impossible at higher levels. You will quickly learn the frustration real bus drivers must feel at trying to keep to their busy schedules. And you might forgive your driver in the real world when he shows up five minutes late from time to time.
However, I am not one of those people, so I got bored rather quickly. As such, I started to try and push the limits of the game. I would drive really fast, trying to recreate some scenes from the movie Speed. Unfortunately, you can’t cause a lot of mayhem. When you smash into a car at 60 miles per hour, it just kind of gently moves out of the way as your bus comes to a stop. Neither the car nor the bus is damaged in any way. The only thing that happens is that your bus load of passengers changes from happy green faces on your meter to angry red ones, or mildly annoyed yellow ones. And of course the warning that you are being deducted points for hitting something pops up. Really? Duh.
There is no smoke. No fire. And no screaming. Completely disappointed, I sheepishly returned to my normal driving route, letting the passengers off at the next stop. I scored a couple hundred negative points for that mission, but there were no ill effects. I still can’t believe I was shamed into following the rules. Without any reaction, driving outside the lines is not very fun.
And since the only people in the city are safely at an indestructible bus stop or riding with you, they are safe too. There are no pedestrians, which is a bit odd in a game that tries to simulate realism. I mean driving on the sidewalk is dangerous for a reason.
The lack of any violence or even danger gives the game an E rating. So if you have a kid who looks at busses in awe and wants to know what it would be like to drive one, you can feel safe giving the game to them and not have to worry about supervision.
Your level of fun with this game, or simulation as the case might be, depends solely on your interest in busses and this type of gameplay. I am sure that there are some number of people who will love trying to drive a 10-ton monster across town perfectly. But I would think that many people also would get bored quickly. So you have been warned. It may be a bumpy ride.