It seems like every job going has had a simulator game or two dedicated to it. Although, I’d wager the humble driver has featured in the most. Bus Simulator 27 narrows down that broad range and puts you behind the wheel of a bus. Who’d have guessed?
For this iteration, development was handled by Simteract, not stillalive studios who worked on the previous titles. Despite Bus Simulator 21 Next Stop receiving mostly positive reviews, will this change of team work out for the best? Or is this a bus we’d rather have missed?
Bus Simulator 27 is out now, and is available on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC.
Build a Mighty Fleet of Buses in Bus Simulator 27!
With just having finished a review for Train Sim World 7, and currently playing House Flipper Remastered Collection, a lot of my gaming time is being spent on simulators! They can be wonky, buggy, and a little ugly, but I find that this is a genre full of stress-free titles. What are your go-to games to chill out with? Let me know in the comments below! But, for now, my bus has arrived, so it’s time to get into the review!
Gameplay
Bus Simulator 27 puts you in charge of a company tasked with restoring Felicia Bay’s public transportation system. To do this you’ll need to buy buses, hire drivers, plot out routes, and, of course, drive them yourself! You’re free to play how you want with three modes to choose from: Story, Career, and Sandbox. I opted for Story, as the opening few missions do a good job in guiding you through the game’s mechanics.
Controlling a bus is pretty simple. Most important features, such as opening doors and using your indicators, have their own buttons assigned. However, there is a pop-up menu that has everything from the systems mentioned, to things like lowering the ramp, and adjusting your headlight strength in one convenient, simple-to-use HUD. Actually driving them feels pretty good, too. They handle exactly how you’d expect: slow to accelerate and wide turning circles. These are big machines, and the game reflects that quite well. I do prefer the handling in Bus Bound, as it feels more responsive, but Bus Simulator 27 isn’t too far off.
Setting up or adjusting routes is also very straightforward. You open up a map, select which bus stops you want on your route, and then you’re good to go! There’s much more to it than just choosing stops at random, and you’ll need to factor in things like journey length, bus types, amount of buses, and optimal times of the day to operate the route. Thankfully, it’s easy to understand, with the menus helping you figure out when there’s an issue thanks to the simple, clean user interface.
Another One Rides the Bus
There’s a good balance of creating routes and building your business with actually getting out there and driving yourself. Missions in Story mode have set goals for you to tackle, although you can just go and drive your various routes to make some easy cash if you’d like.
When you are behind the wheel, you’re graded on practically everything you do. Ran a red light or drove right past a stop? That’ll deduct points! Gave a passenger the correct ticket or slowed down when going over a speed bump? Well done, you get more points! You’ll also be interacting with passengers to increase your points even further. You’ll be asking people to turn their loud music down, waking up sleeping NPCs that have missed their stop, and so on. At the end of a route, you’ll earn experience based on your performance. This then goes into levelling up your skills and the company as a whole, in turn unlocking new districts and bus stops.
The most frustrating aspects of Bus Simulator 27 really did start to grate on me after a while. Traffic AI is woefully incompetent, often stopping dead in the middle of the road for no reason. Vehicles will spawn out of nowhere and also disappear without a trace. The game also doesn’t seem to fully register when you use your indicators far too often, meaning it will penalise you for turning without using it, even when you can clearly see it blinking!
Graphics & Audio
Visually, Bus Simulator 27 is a bit of a mixed bag. On the positive side, the actual buses look great. They’re detailed both inside and out, looking as close to their real-life counterparts as possible. The environments, although suffering from some grainy textures, are serviceable and can be nice to drive around. There’s also the option to switch between “Classic” and “Realistic” graphical modes. While there isn’t all that much difference between the two, I did prefer Classic’s brighter, more vivid colour grading.
The more I played, the more issues I started to notice. For one, longer play sessions resulted in consistent frame drops, which meant having to close the game and restart to fix. Character models are repeated frequently, and all NPCs have a tendency to clip through the environment, your bus, and each other. Animations in general are quite poor, with a lot of stiff, jerking movements from both cars and pedestrians. Thankfully there were no game-breaking issues, but I was still rather unimpressed with what was presented.
As for the audio, it’s decent at best and irritating at worst. Different buses have different engine sounds, which I did appreciate. Similar to Train Sim World, I’m sure this is something bus enthusiasts will appreciate, as it makes each vehicle that much more unique. Voice actors do a fine job during missions, but prepare yourself to hear the same few lines repeated by passengers over and over again!
Longevity
The Story mode of Bus Simulator 27 is pretty lengthy, and will take a few dozen hours to see through to the end. Of course, when you add in the endless Career and Sandbox modes, you can practically play this for as long as it keeps you entertained.
Final Thoughts
Is Bus Simulator 27 one of the best sim games I’ve played? No, there are far too many issues to put it high up on that list. But did I enjoy the time I spent with it? Mostly, yes! Despite its flaws, I can’t deny that I had a pretty chilled-out experience, with only a few issues that made me mumble swear words under my breath. Although it does need a bit more polish, this is still a decent title that both bus and simulator enthusiasts will probably enjoy.
With all that said, I’ll be giving Bus Simulator 27 the Thumb Culture Silver Award!
Disclaimer: A code was received in order to write this review.
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