Rural crime scene (Old Town Roads is all kinds of awful)

Old Town Roads, the Bus Bound add-on released last week, won’t help repair Saber Interactive’s damaged reputation. Your six quid buys a remarkably bland minibus, and a rural map extension made by people (?) who’ve seemingly never set foot outside a city.

The fact that I really like downtown Emberville (^) makes Old Town Roads’ dire depiction of the city’s rural fringe all the more disappointing. Driving down 99th Street or Viaduct Drive on a damp night, that magic threshold between actuality and artifice… here and there, can get delightfully blurry. The chance of similar confusion occurring in Farelane and Lake Firefly is close to zero.

It’s hard to suspend disbelief when the majority of your passengers are wearing dungarees and straw hats…

When livestock pens and fields feel like they’ve been laid out by four-year-olds…

And roadside scenery often seems to be arguing with thoroughfares rather than cooperating with them.

Everywhere you look there’s awkwardly placed buildings and equipment, improbable fencing, and ghastly boulder barriers.

Manage to find a spot without guard-rails and the reason for all the kerb curbs becomes clear: Bus Bound’s physics and collision detection simply aren’t strong enough for credible off-roading.

While the best parts of the new districts are the relatively urban areas, even these aren’t immune from sloppy mapmaking. Did a Saber scenery placer really think this gas station layout…

…looked plausible?

As rural illiteracy in video games usually only takes the form of inappropriate flora or flawed or anachronistic farming practices, it tends to be easy to overlook. However, when a self-declared sim mangles and misunderstands the countryside as grievously as Old Town Roads does, the effect is disastrous. The dungareed cliches currently standing at stops on the Hayseed and Bumpkin Lines have awfully long waits ahead of them, as I’ve no intention of visiting Farelane or Lake Firefly ever again.