Anyone tried the free demo of this? https://store.steampowered.com/app/2095420/Bus_Bound/ Found it okay but no OMSI 2. Graphics very soft though discovered the demo launches with all of the sliders at minimal so need to play around with Settings. The demo bus sounds and handles quite well. Not sure how well the management and driving aspect combined will play out and at least in the demo there is no fare collection mechanic. The bus service is entirely funded by local government. Fictional location and vehicles as opposed to licensed brands also a bit off putting. Price and release date TBA but presumably soon. Not sure it’s worth a full price purchase if pitched at the £30 level but maybe a sale later in the year. Still think the ETS2 bus add on will do things better though we are at the whims of SCS when it might appear.
Now uninstalled... just not ticking my boxes at all. "The Bus" is actually better. And that's saying something for an Aerosoft title!
What shocks me about what I've seen of this game is that you can barely see the left rearview mirror and not the right one at all... If it's a simulator, then it can't be worse. No mirror, no bus driving !
Good one - touché! Ironically, part of the problem. The initial tutorial route only had two or three stops. I went to the map to set up a new custom route but there did not appear to be any way to add bus stops to a road as you would in Transport Fever or Cities Skylines. Maybe that feature was just disabled for the demo. However I am getting a City Tram Sim vibe about this. An unknown developer hitches on the tails of a well known software house, in this case Saber (Snowrunner, Roadcraft etc.) to publish their work which is nowhere near the standard of the in house titles. Edit: Well watched a couple of YT clips and maybe I have been a bit harsh in my initial assessment. Will reinstall later and do a bit more. Additional bus stops and areas are unlocked by doing runs and getting passenger likes etc. There’s also a cool looking livery editor.
Uninstalled again… Tried a run in one of the buses which went okay. Loaded into a second run with a different bus and the screen was flickering like crazy, then when I started to drive parts of the screen turned into concertina vertical lines. Not my GPU as I tested TSW and FS25 afterwards, both of which worked fine. Not sure how far away from release this is, but definitely not ready for prime time. Smacks of yet another early access title (like that Hakodate Tram Sim, Train Crew or even CTS), being rushed out in a poorly finished state to line the dev’s pockets.
Thanks for the heads up Vern, have downloaded and will have a look later, might be uninstalling it later also.
The graphics distortion occurred trying to do a night run, so might be worth plodding through until you get to that. Otherwise it just seems to be trying to cover too many bases, strategy, planning and actually driving but then hanging what you can do to expand the network behind an achievement wall.
I did (for once in these bus games) find the city to be more realistic (at least relative to other similar games’ maps). But overall it just feels like another cheaply built bus sim lite game. It’s amazing that after all these years they can’t escape the comparison to OMSI 2 & in part I feel it’s because they just ignore the things OMSI got right. The tangents they all seem to off on in terms of company & route building seems little more than to make up for the lack of game in terms of actually driving. If it was something people actually wanted then one of the previous game templates would at least have succeeded in being a comparison (let alone a recommended bus sim) beyond OMSI 2. Personally I think ETS’ venture into Coach driving will be the best thing we’ve had since OMSI, even with the lack of city bus gameplay.
That for me is indeed the main event, though it could be months or even over a year before we see it. What we all really want is an OMSI 3!
