Bus Simulator 27 Makes Bus Driving An Adventure
There was a TV programme in the UK called On the Buses, which was on in the early 1970s. It was a comedy that showed a couple of bus drivers getting up to naughty shenanigans and making it look like they had the best job in the world. In real life though? Well, bus drivers have to deal with traffic, angry customers, and pedestrians walking out in front of them.
Bus Simulator 27 sits somewhere between these two worlds. There is a narrative this time around, with you getting involved with characters and exploring a fictional city, but it also has the realistic details of running a bus and creating routes. Ding, ding, let’s go.
This game comes from Simteract, a studio that is no stranger to sim games, with Train Life and Taxi Life already in its repository. Here, you have three options to begin with: Story, Career, and Sandbox. In Sandbox mode, you can drive your buses without pressure, with the whole world unlocked from the start. Career mode lets you build up your private bus company, with all the districts open to you immediately. Story mode is the one I would start with, as it offers a tutorial alongside a fun narrative that takes you around the city, bit by bit.
Building A Bus Service In Felicia Bay
Felicia Bay is the fictional location, modelled after the Iberian coastal towns of Spain and Portugal. The city hasn’t had a bus service for ages due to corrupt governments and declining finances. So, you have your own private company and, with some very enthusiastic employees from the transport department, you are launching a new bus service across the city, district by district.
What’s very good about having a story mode is that it gives you an extra incentive to play the game rather than simply driving from A to B. I think the characters you meet along the way are fun and interesting, from a wise old engineer to a flamboyant mayor. It’s a good way to take you through the basics before introducing more complicated routes as you progress through the game.
The Business Of Driving
Driving a bus is the first thing you’ll do. Before you start, you can choose how complicated or arcade-like you want the experience to be. Operating the bus involves a series of checks before you set off, such as turning on the engine and lowering or raising the headlights. Make sure you are in Drive mode, and then off you go. You can switch between a first-person, in-the-driver’s-seat view and that of a third-person driving from outside the bus. I found the first-person perspective much more manageable and, for some reason, found the third-person driving more erratic.
As you drive, you follow the sat nav route for the bus journey ahead. Indicate when turning left or right and obey the rules of the road unless you want to pick up penalty points. You pull into bus stops to collect your passengers, opening the doors, putting down disability ramps, and then closing everything up again before moving on. Sometimes passengers are naughty by playing music too loudly or shouting, so you have to look in the mirror to tell them off. I found this didn’t work particularly well though, and they just carried on, so I carried on driving too.
At the end of the route, you get experience points depending on how well you did and how the experience was for your passengers. Some of them will leave reviews and like your service, but don’t go looking for the bad ones.
Growing Your Empire
There is also a management mode where you can buy buses, with a good range of licences and different options available. You hire, and fire, staff depending on how they are doing. You create bus routes for all the different areas on the map and then combine them into larger routes. There is plenty of variation here, and it’s fun to plan everything out, watch your driving empire work together, and see the money rolling in.
A Sunny City With A Few Rough Edges
Bus Simulator 27 has two graphics options available: a more realistic gritty mode or the sunnier cartoon mode. To be honest, there isn’t much difference between the two. The world is a lovely, sunny one, with different environments and areas of the city to explore. It’s a nice place to bus around in. Of course, traffic can be annoying, though, and sometimes the AI isn’t brilliant, with cars stopping for no good reason. Things can also pop up for seemingly no reason, such as another bus suddenly appearing in front of you. Hopefully, a few updates will sort that out.
Sound-wise, things are very much on the basic side of things in terms of the music, and I could have done with a radio station. The effects are good, though, and the voice cast does a decent job with the main characters and the passengers.
A Solid Drive With Room To Improve
Bus Simulator 27 doesn’t quite match my favourite bus simulator game – Bus Bound – but it’s certainly up there on the list. I think the story mode is a great way to introduce new people to the game and help them get used to the mechanics. And there are enough difficulty options included to cater for the hardcore realistic fans out there. The mix of driving and empire building is a healthy one, but I do hope that some of the bugs are sorted out in the next few updates.
But for now, I have another shift to do in Bus Simulator 27.
Important Links
Hop Aboard Bus Simulator 27 For The Series’ Biggest Ride Yet – https://www.thexboxhub.com/hop-aboard-bus-simulator-27-for-the-series-biggest-ride-yet/
Bus Simulator 27 Pulls into the Station | New Trailer Unveiled! – https://www.thexboxhub.com/bus-simulator-27-pulls-into-the-station-with-a-new-unreal-engine-5-world/
Buy from the Xbox Store – https://www.xbox.com/en-GB/games/store/bus-simulator-27/9pnhkn79l7nf
There’s a Deluxe Edition too – https://www.xbox.com/en-GB/games/store/bus-simulator-27-deluxe-edition/9pf7fs4qgwkb
