In Defense of American Truck Simulator's Road Trip DLC.

While American Truck Simulator is certainly not the first video game to try mapping out the entire United States of America in digital form, it's the first where racing isn't the intent behind the game. Games like The Crew and Test Drive Unlimited have tackled the task of making a shockingly huge map of all or part of the United States and letting you race through it at high speeds with performance vehicles. However, ATS is seeking to map out the entire USA (and soon, parts of Canada) from the context of 18-wheeler hauling and shipping. I've owned this game for a few years now, but unfortunately, the intrigue of cruising across the USA never really hooked me like it should because of the only tools at my disposal - heavy, lumbering, torque-y trucks that were designed to get heavy equipment, resources and chemicals from one point to another. My distaste for ATS had nothing to do with the developers at SCS Software and their creative choices because the game itself is well-built around…