Hard Truck 18 Wheels Of Steel Across America Download Full Version

[Tabita Knezevic]

In this game you play for once in a while with a truck in stead of a 'normal' car. There are several goals you can choose from, or just drive around for fun.
Basically you have to drive cargo across the US of A. to earn money.
Sometimes there will be special pick ups, you get notified of. Then you have to get there as soon as possible, otherwise an opponent may be ahead of you.
The driving of the truck can be hard. Especially when you have to reverse
The controls are all explained in the option menu. So in case, just like me, you don't know how to connect the truck to the load hit 't'.
You can even use or blinkers, turn on/off mirrors.
Next to that there are some different kind of views in game. from topdown, inside the truck, or from behind, etc.
This might help you if you are going to put your load in a docking bay.
by Latis

Windows
This is a Windows game. Sometimes it should be run on an older Windows version or at least a 32-bit Windows. You could use VMware player (free) and install an older Windows on a virtual machine. e.g. I have installed my old Windows XP 32bit on VMware. More info on that you can find over here.

18 Wheels of Steel: Across America is a management-style game for PC. It was developed by the award-winning studio, Stainless Games. This version is very much like Hard Truck: 18 Wheels of Steel but the graphics were enhanced, additional cargo and trucks were added, and an entirely new map was made which allows users to drive across the whole continental United States, through thirty cities. In this version, players have to choose from thirty different trucks and forty+ trailers. The graphics are quite good; everything looks sharp and nice. The user interface is fairly simple and intuitive, it takes just a few minutes to get used to playing this game.

The actual gameplay of the game is pretty much the same as the previous releases of 18 Wheels of Steel: Across America, you have to pick up cargo in various spots all over the map, be it from cargo trailers or from the ground. You also have to earn money by completing jobs and challenges. Driving your truck and hitting the target points will earn you cash, which can be used to buy new wheels, add-ons or upgrades for your trucks.

I must say that this game is more addictive than the previous editions, especially when you have the trucks. Plus, the overall graphics are much better and more realistic, the damage is more detailed, and there are more details in the game. Overall, this is still a great hard truck game, and although it doesn't have the same kind of features as the original hard truck series, it's a fun game to play. If you like the original hard truck installments, then this would be another great download.

Its aggressive title notwithstanding, Hard Truck: 18 Wheels of Steel isn't a traditional foot-to-the-floor racer. Unlike most driving games, this budget-priced game from ValuSoft does not put you in high-speed wheel-to-wheel duels with computer-controlled competitors. Instead, you must carefully navigate your way through a semirealistic version of America, picking up and delivering cargo, weighing the hazards of available assignments against potential monetary gain, and eventually building an untouchable trucking empire. At some points, you'll feel compelled to drive at maximum big-rig speeds and bend a few rules here and there just to ensure that your payloads arrive in a timely fashion. But Hard Truck is very much a solo journey that emphasizes truck management as much as it does point-to-point pace. Whether you'll enjoy the game depends very much on your affinity for its unusual concept and your ability to look past several quirks and glitches to see the rather intriguing challenges that lie underneath.

Although Hard Truck isn't exactly a household name on this side of the Atlantic, the game has actually existed in one form or another for several years, having originally been developed way back in 1998 by Russian design studio SoftLab-Nsk. This, the third iteration in the series, is produced jointly by Czech-based SCS Software and America's Sunstorm Interactive (of Deer Hunter fame) and will be seen by veteran Hard Truckers as a very different game from prior editions. Whereas earlier versions of the game featured an action-packed arcade mode and a worrisome amount of vehicular contact, Hard Truck: 18 Wheels of Steel dispenses with the arcade-style wackiness in favor of simulation-style authenticity.

When you begin your very first assignment, you'll find yourself parked, engine off, in a San Francisco loading dock, preparing to pick up and haul your first load to one of several cities in the American Southwest. This is the chosen locale for Hard Truck's "easy" mode, whereas the medium level takes place in and around the Midwest, and the difficult level runs through the uneven terrain and inclement weather of the Rocky Mountains.

Hard Truck offers a truly impressive variety of viewing perspectives, many of which you'll want to audition right away. From the first-person cab view, you can see all that is ahead of you or use your mouse to virtually turn your head from side to side to peer out the driver and passenger windows. The game offers several other camera angles, including right and left mirrors (which are unfortunately not incorporated in the cab view), an aerial camera position that lets you monitor everything in the immediate vicinity, and a nifty mouse-controlled free-floating exterior cam that pivots 360 degrees around the truck.

As is typical of every Hard Truck mission, you'll see a number of trailers, each filled with a given cargo and ready for transportation. Large floating message boards appear above each trailer, displaying the nature and fragility of the cargo, the time allotted for your run, and various other critical details. Naturally, remuneration for your efforts will vary in accordance with their relative difficulty. Hauling a load of delicate glassware over a long distance in a short time frame will pay far more than trucking a container of clothing on a short jaunt down the freeway.

If you manage to make your delivery, you'll use the resulting paycheck to increase your bank account, effect necessary repairs, and improve your company's rating. With a better rating, you'll be offered more-profitable jobs. With more-profitable jobs, you'll gradually improve and upgrade your truck, purchase new trucks, hire new drivers to handle the extra workload, and, with any luck, grow your company to obscene proportions.

But Hard Truck has many potholes on the road to success. Most often, the missions' allotted time frames are frightfully tight. In many instances, you'll find yourself ignoring stop signs and traffic lights and exceeding speed limits just to complete a job on time. In so doing, you may incur the wrath of the local authorities and pay a significant penalty. You may try jumping the occasional curb just to cut precious seconds from a given run, only to see your trailer detach and drop to the road. You'll then be forced to dial 911 and pay a towing service just to get reattached and remobilized.

And those aren't the only potential hazards. Just as in real life, Hard Truck requires its drivers to regularly replenish themselves with a certain amount of sleep, or they'll risk nodding off at the wheel. To monitor whether you need sleep, you need to watch the game's "drive time" readout at the top of the screen. When the clock reaches zero, which due to Hard Truck's accelerated time and compressed distances will occur every 20 minutes or so, your virtual eyes will begin to close and the screen will grow dark. They'll pop open again in just a second or two, but in the meantime you may have driven off the road or into another vehicle or roadside abutment. As you continue to drift in and out of sleep, the dark periods grow more frequent and the potential for accidents increases. Fortunately, you can pull into a motel, a truck stop, or even a rest area for some shut-eye, an instantaneous procedure where your only decision is the amount of sleep you can afford. The downside, of course, is that you'll have even less time to complete your run once you do get moving again.

Soon, you'll realize that sleep stops, fuel stops, weigh-in stops, and inadvertent police stops cut seriously into your schedule. Throw in the occasional accident--some of which occur independently of you but block the road ahead--and you'll quickly see that you must take a few risks just to keep your company in business. Luckily, you can always hit the N key to gain immediate access to critical company information. How's your rating? How effective are your new drivers? Can you afford to hire a better driver? Are you rated highly enough for an upgraded cargo license? Are you talented enough to be assigned a higher-paying regular route? The questions are many, and in this way, Hard Truck is a very interesting game.

It is not, however, designed for those who like their driving fast and furious. In truth, the majority of gameplay is spent behind the wheel of your 18-wheeler, where the going is often slow and sometimes tedious. From a dead stop, it'll take at least one full minute of real time to attain any sort of decent speed. Indeed, first gear brings you up to all of 10mph, and in this game, 10mph feels like 10mph. Although this is realistic, it's not quite the same experience as driving a nimble racecar. Furthermore, simply brushing against a guardrail or another vehicle is often enough to grind your truck to a complete stop, forcing you to endure that entire acceleration process once again. Curiously, Hard Truck's trucks are affected only marginally, if at all, by steep grades.

Even backing up to deliver your goods at a loading dock is a time-consuming affair. Newcomers will undoubtedly jackknife their rig many times before they're finally able to direct it into the correct stall. Unfortunately, as much as the game's accelerated clock helps make your long-distance runs a bit less cumbersome, it is your enemy at the receiving and loading docks, where an hour or more of game time can go by while you simply try to maneuver your rig into its designated dock.

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