Euro Truck Simulator 2 - a game I never knew I needed

For the past 48 hours, Euro Truck Simulator 2 has been at the top of the Steam charts after successfully making it on to the service via Greenlight. After watching and reading some surprisingly positive reviews / coverage of the game, I went ahead and bought a copy yesterday afternoon.

I have barely stopped playing it since. This game is so good. I'm not usually one for simulator games - truck-driving, least of all - but this game finds a magical sweet spot between the hours of driving and the company management features so that I really want to carry on building my haulage empire. So far, Old Mary McGee - CEO of "The Freight of Your Life" - owns two trucks and one garage in Glasgow, from which she and another staff member deliver everything from German ice cream to Scottish fertiliser to every corner of the continent (well... as far as Poland, which is where the map ends).

The most inspired feature of the game is the radio. The game can play mp3 files from your computer hard drive, as is typical of most PC driving games, but it also includes the ability to stream internet radio stations. ETS2 has a whole list of real European radio stations, all streaming live into your truck cabin. I would never have thought to request such a feature in a driving game, but now it would seem like madness to leave it out. There are at least 50 stations to choose from, but my personal recommendation is HotMixRadio, a French station that plays nothing but 80s classics.

The game has a fantastic controller wizard that lets you tweak deadzones and sensitivities and you can remap every single control in the game. The game actually plays really well with a 360 pad (or your nearest equivalent), so long as you remember to remap the acceleration / brakes to the triggers. You'll have to keep the keyboard close for some of the less-used controls though, because there's no way you can fit everything on to a pad.

When I first saw this game, I was intrigued but happy to wait until the next Steam sale to grab it at a lower price, but I am really glad I changed my mind and gave the developers the full cut. They really deserve it for making such an enjoyable game!

Has anyone else purchased this game? What are your thoughts on it?

(And, if you've yet to take the plunge, there's a FREE DEMO on the ETS2 website, something the Steam page should probably tell you about... The file is less than half a GB, so it's definitely worth a look!)