There are a lot of things that Bus Driver has going for it. From a nuts and bolts perspective it pretty much can check the boxes. The graphics are good and the sound isn’t nagging so long as you don’t mind the varoom of a bus engine and the shrieks of passengers when you break too hard. There isn’t a sound track or voice acting to speak of, just the pleasant buzz of road noises. The AI doesn’t have too much to do, mostly timing you to make sure you get to the right place on time, and keeping track of how much you screw up, which it does easily, allowing you to rack up points for the positive or the negative depending on your driving prowess or lack there of.
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| Blinker on means you can see your blind spot! | Plenty of courses and buses to choose from. |
The game play is both very simple and complex all at once. At the most basic level you are simply pressing the up key to accelerate, the down to break or reverse, and the side-to-side keys to keep you in your lane. That’s the simple part. The not so simple part is that you have to remember and follow traffic rules and there is a bunch of other buttons for things like turning blinkers off and on. The bus you’re driving handles like…a bus, which means it’s a pain in the butt sometimes! You can’t turn on a dime, you hit things, and momentum is your enemy since once you get going fast you have a hard time slowing down and then the whiny butt passengers complain, as you can’t go faster than about 45 mph. Add traffic lights, other cars parked on the side of the road, a time schedule and it’s not nearly as easy as just zooming from one place to the next. It hooked me because I knew that I just couldn’t suck that bad. I ended up with about a negative 4000 score on the first run, so I had to keep playing until I could consistently end up in the positive zone.
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| This is the answer to life, the universe, and everything bus. | Follow the blinking arrows. |
The other thing that became obvious to me is that Bus Driver is a good family game. It’s rated E for 3+, and both of my boys, 7 and 11 loved it. The first time through they both spent their time trying to destroy everything possible. They ran into light posts, rammed other cars, drove the wrong way on one-way streets, tried to hit the passengers (you can’t do that, btw, not part of the programming), and competed for the lowest possible score. After that was worked out of their system they started actually playing the game as designed to by earning points and clearing all of the levels in the first two tiers. Over two days they played for around 3 hours at a time. Keeping two preteens occupied for six hours was totally worth the $20 price tag for the game.
All in all I didn’t have too many complaints about Bus Driver. It’s a simple casual game, but it does what it sets out to do well. Hard core gamers are likely to be bored with it, however, for a casual pop in and play it was fun and will definitely see more play time around here.
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| My passengers hate me. Stupid bus. | In the home stretch. Get off of my bus! |
BUS DRIVER VERDICT
All in all I didn’t have too many complaints about Bus Driver. It’s a simple casual game, but it does what it sets out to do well. Hard core gamers are likely to be bored with it, however, for a casual pop in and play it was fun and will definitely see more play time around here.
TOP GAME MOMENT
Making a right hand turn at 30 mph, remembering the dang blinker and immediately pulling into a bus stop without crashing into anything.
