Review : Big Mutha Truckers : PS2

Big Mutha Truckers
PS2
By Steve Fulton
(Originally published on Gamerdad.com)

Slam The Hammer Down, Blow The Doors Off This One And Give It A Big 10-22
To a 7-year old in 1977, Star Wars was the coolest thing ever conceived.  The second coolest thing was Evel Knievel and his insane jumps on motorcycles with factory suspensions.  The third coolest thing however, was American trucker phenomenon.  The mid 1970’s saw independent truckers and their CB lingo pull out of the truck stops and drive head-on into the American psyche.  Like most great American pop-culture mishaps (i.e. disco, 50’s sock hops, teenage scientists, wire-fu, bullet-time, etc.), it all started in the movie theatre.  It began with White Line Fever in 1975, continued with The Last Of The Cowboys starring Henry Fonda in 1976, reached an apex in 1977 with Burt Reynolds and Smokey And The Bandit, and petered-out (cut-off by the success of Star Wars) with the Sam Peckinpah directed Convoy in 1978. It is no coincidence that the last great western of 70’s, Clint Eastwood’s The Outlaw Josey Wales, was released in 1976, smack-dab in the middle of trucker-movie era.   For a few short years (until Han Solo shot-first and rose above all comers), truckers replaced cowboys as the quintessential outlaw-heroes of the American West.   What drove this fascination with 18-wheels vehicles, and the people (mostly men) who piloted them?   The open roads and convoys of big rigs were like the romantic, wide-open spaces, wagon trains, and cattle drives of the western era.  “Smokeys” were like the corrupt town Sheriffs, or worse, the ruthless Pinkerton men.  Knowing the complicated CB language was like having a ticket into a private, FCC thumb-nosing party.   This was post-Vietnam, and heroes for kids were in short supply. As silly as it may seem, the truck-driver of the mid-70’s seemed to embody the All-American spirit of freedom, independence, free trade, and the dream of making your life into anything you want it to be.  




Big Mutha Truckers misses all but the basest form of this trucker fascination.  While initially encouraging, this game ends up taking too many short-cuts and loses it’s way.     The title’s premise is based on a 60-day “trucking” contest between the children of the retiring trucking magnet Ma Jackson, to see who will inherit the family business.   As one of her children (your choice from four mildly-offensive Southern stereotypes), you are provided with a truck, some cash, an initial load, and a destination to sell your product.  You are then set-free to drive the roads of the fictional Hick State County (subtle eh?), on a mission to make as much money as possible.  The county has a basic supply/demand economic model that you must follow if you want to beat your siblings and take over the family business.
Your first destination acts a short tutorial for the interface, introducing you to NAV arrows, SATNAV map and the arcade-like forward, reverse, left right, hi-low gear driving interface.  Handling the truck takes a little getting used-to, but after a few minutes it becomes fairly easy to control. You follow the arrows to your destination, dodging Police Cars and outlaw bikers along the way.  There is little penalty (besides time and truck damage) to smashing other cars on the road, and in some cases the behavior if awarded with bonuses.    Smashing Police cars takes you into a mini-game where you must out-run the local law enforcement.  Running over bikers takes you into a similar mode. It requires you to dodge bullets, and jackknife your rig to throw bikers, crawling Mad-Max style on across your trailer, from your truck.   While these moments punch-up the journey, they are few and far between. The drives are lengthy, and quite slow.  Even in high-gear your truck will seemingly crawl along the roads.  For your in-cab entertainment on your long-haul, you are provided a radio with multiple stations of talk and music.  While mildly entertaining, it repeats often and you will probably turn it off after a few days worth of driving. 
When you reach your destination, you are allowed sell your load and buy a new one, re-fuel, upgrade, and repair your truck, trade for a new trailer, and gather information in bar/truck-stop on news and which loads might gain you the most cash.  Each load you transport constitutes one-day of game time.  There is a bit of strategy involved here as your plan your next destination, the contents of your load, and how much to spend on your truck. Then, you get to do it all-over again.  59 more times.    After the first few hauls you will learn the simple economic model, and you will experience most of the “mini-games”.   Then it is simply more of the same.  If there was more depth here, Big Mutha Truckers could have been an enjoyable drive down big-rig memory lane, but instead you are stuck with a slow-moving strategy/arcade hybrid that does neither genre justice.

The biggest offense here is not that the game is boring, but how it treats it subject matter.   This game is really a low-blow/sucker-punch/ear-biting penalty to its 70’s trucker-lore roots.   Look, I’m all-for parody.  The whole trucker fascination was nearly a parody unto itself, but if you are going to make a parody, at least try to get the major details correct.  Big Mutha Truckers forgets one of the basic tenants of trucker-dom: the CB radio.  This is a major oversight that is hard to overlook.  Furthermore, the game misses the fact that most truckers are not privateers who buy and sell goods like 18-wheel-jockeying commodity brokers, but instead are paid to haul goods for other people and businesses.   It also limits the “wide open roads” of the truck driver to a rather claustrophobic set of back-roads and highways in a fictional county. Finally, it’s southern stereotypes are clichéd and simply not funny.    
There must be a great trucking game out in development somewhere and I can envision it now.   It’s in the vein of Interstate ’76, buts set in the big-rig 70’s fantasy world of guys like Burt Reynolds, Jackie Gleason, Kris Kristofferson, and Jerry Reed.  It would contain convoys, great Smokey roadblocks, Coor’s beer runs across the Mississippi River, bar fights, and a black t-top Trans-Am with a 20-something Sally Field along for the ride.  There would be a 32-player mode where two people team-up as “Bandit 1” and “Bandit 2”, while the other 30 play Texas deputies with 4-cylinder Chevy Novas driving wall-to-wall in full Tijuana taxi-mode.   If that game would be announced, I’d be in truck-stop heaven.  However, while companies keep shoveling out uninspired, sub-par fare like Big Mutha Truckers and last year’s Hard Truck III: Wheels Of Steel the pearly gates to that dream will remain permanently shuttered..
Kid Factor: Kids will love to try to drive the big-rigs, but will most likely get bored easily.  The trucks are slow, and are hard to maneuver. If a mistake is made while trying to follow the NAV arrows, turning the truck-around can be a wholly frustrating experience.   The basic economic model could be educational for a short time, however the violent confrontations with bikers and Police could prove scary to kids and offense to some parents.

Score: ** ½*

Age: 5+
ESRB: E - Everyone
Producer: THQ

Developer: Eutechnyx