Bus Simulator 27 REVIEW
Bus Simulator 27 understands one of the simple pleasures that makes this peculiar genre work: sometimes it is genuinely relaxing to spend an evening driving a large vehicle through an unfamiliar city, stopping every few minutes to let people on and trying not to scrape a parked car around a tight corner. Felicia Bay provides an appealing setting for that routine, replacing the familiar grey urban landscape with a sunny Southern European region of dense city streets, coastal roads, suburbs and quieter rural areas. When everything works as intended, simply following a route can be pleasantly absorbing.
The scale is one of the sequel’s strongest qualities. Felicia Bay is divided into twenty districts across the cities of Mequina and Alcaztelar and their surroundings, giving routes enough visual variety to keep the daily routine from becoming monotonous too quickly. The addition of coach buses is particularly welcome, since longer intercity journeys feel noticeably different from weaving an articulated city bus through crowded streets. More than forty-five licensed vehicles from thirteen manufacturers provide plenty to experiment with, and the differences in sounds, layouts and handling help give at least some of them their own personality rather than making the fleet feel like a collection of interchangeable skins.
There is also much more to do than simply choose a bus and follow the GPS. Routes can be created and scheduled, new vehicles purchased, drivers hired and different districts connected as the company expands. Story mode provides objectives to guide that progression, Career removes much of the narrative structure, while Sandbox offers an easier way to simply explore the systems without worrying about money or unlocks. Passenger interactions add another layer: tickets need to be sold and checked, fare dodgers can be caught, and occasional troublemakers may block doors, play loud music or create other minor disturbances. None of these systems is especially deep on its own, but together they give the job a welcome sense of routine and responsibility.
Unfortunately, the simulation occasionally becomes most unpredictable where it should be most dependable: on the road. Traffic can hesitate inexplicably, become stuck at intersections or make questionable manoeuvres directly in front of the bus. This would be little more than amusing background chaos if the game did not also monitor the player’s driving so closely. Being penalized for a collision caused by another vehicle, an incorrectly detected indicator or an unavoidable detour around blocked traffic is considerably less entertaining. Several updates have already improved these systems, but there are still moments when obeying the rules feels harder than simply surviving the behaviour of everyone else.
The presentation has a similarly uneven quality. Felicia Bay can look attractive from behind the windscreen, particularly when weather and time of day combine with the warmer Mediterranean scenery, and the option to choose between more stylized and realistic color grading is a nice touch. Closer inspection is less flattering. Passenger animations can look stiff, character models occasionally clip through one another, familiar dialogue begins repeating relatively quickly and performance does not always seem justified by what is being rendered. These problems rarely make a normal route impossible to enjoy, but they repeatedly remind you that the game could have benefited from more time in the polishing stage.
That roughness is particularly unfortunate because the underlying driving experience is quite approachable. Bus Simulator 27 manages to sit somewhere between a demanding transport simulation and a relaxed driving game without fully committing to either extreme. Controls can be simplified or made more hands-on, steering wheels and controllers are supported, and four-player co-op gives running the network with friends an appealing social dimension. The management layer could ultimately be deeper and some of the surrounding systems give an impression of complexity that they do not entirely fulfil, but there is enough flexibility here to accommodate both players who want to manage a fleet and those who simply want another route to drive.
Bus Simulator 27 therefore feels less like a bad bus simulator than a promising one released before all of its moving parts were equally ready. Its large map, varied fleet, coach routes and pleasantly methodical core loop can make an ordinary drive surprisingly enjoyable, and there is clearly a substantial simulation underneath the technical distractions. At the same time, unreliable traffic, inconsistent penalties and lingering visual and performance issues make it difficult to become completely immersed in the job. With further refinement it has the ingredients to become a strong entry in the series; for now, it is an enjoyable but noticeably uneven journey where the destination often looks better than the road leading to it.
