Big Mutha Truckers [GC]

Damage is taken whenever you slam into something. Depending on the angle, what part of your truck you hit, and how fast you're moving, you'll receive corresponding amounts of damage. These aren't always stationary objects that you're ramming -- sometimes they're other cars, buses, trucks, or mobile homes. Whenever you hit someone and cause a significant amount of damage you're awarded money. Since your repairs are usually cheap, smash away because you'll end up making tons of cash. Just make sure your damage meter doesn't max out, because then you'll break down and be towed back to your point of origin.

While you're causing all this damage on the road, you still want to be conscious of what you're ramming into. If you hit a police cruiser, a police chase will ensue. It's fairly easy to evade the police, either drive without hitting anything for a while and you'll manage to outrun them, or you can turn the cruiser into a burning hunk of steel. While you usually don't have problems escaping, and it's amusing to watch a cruiser dash under your trailer, if your copometer fills up, you'll be arrested and forced to pay a fine (and you lose a day).

The same rule applies to the bikers. If you happen to run over a troop of bikers in your way, be prepared to have your truck jacked. These rough riders will attempt to shoot out your tires, and when that fails them, they'll climb up on top of your rig in an attempt to take over the cockpit. This is more entertaining than the cop chases (unless they actually succeed in stealing your cargo) because violently weaving through traffic will fling bikers across the pavement.

When you aren't on the road, you're spending the night in one of Hick State County's fine cities. You will become all too familiar with Capital City, Skeeter's Creek, Greenback, Smokestack Heights, and Salt Sea City. While it's fun to just kick back with a couple beers at the bar, you have business to do. The store is where you buy and sell your goods. The bar is a good place to pick up tips on needed commodities, win some cash in the slot machines, or borrow capital from the loan shark. At the garage, you can refuel and repair your truck, change your trailer between flat back, refrigerated, and tanker for hauling different types of cargo, purchase upgrades like better brakes and engine, spoiler, bull bars, shocks, more cargos room, and armor.

So goes the game: you pick up cargo, drive to your destination, and sell cargo, then repeat. Occasionally, this model will be broken by other drivers waging a sum of money that they can beat you in a race to a destination of your choice, or someone will hire you out for a special job that involves smashing up cars, collecting debts, destroying billboards, or running over news stands. While this, coupled with your desire to upgrade your truck, keeps things interesting for a while (aka 15 - 20 minutes), soon you'll realize that this is the entire game. Special missions are few and far between, so it's a lot of trekking over all too familiar routes. By the time you make it to day 20, you'll be thoroughly sick of the monotonous gameplay in Trial by Truck'n. Getting to day 60 is more a trial of your patience than a test of your truck'n skills. If you decide that mission mode is what you need as a brief intermission between truck stops, you'll be sad to discover that mission mode is simply a compilation of the special missions from Trial by Truck'n.