Hard Truck: Apocalypse

Developed by Buka Entertainment and Targem Games and published by CDV, Hard Truck: Apocalypse is a pretty cool concept: a single-player, mission-based, car-combat game with role-playing elements that has you accomplishing a series of goals in a post-apocalyptic world (jeez, that was a lot of hyphens). Sounds pretty fun, right? Well, if Hard Truck: Apocalypse proves anything, it’s that just because something sounds good on paper doesn’t mean it’ll be fun in practice. The mission structure is just too boring to hold your attention for too long, and the world map is way too barren, even for a decimated wasteland.

Hard Truck: Apocalypse opens with a prologue explaining the extinction-level events that resulted in the destruction of the world as we know it. You are a young man who just had a birthday, and is given the huge responsibility of handling the family delivery business. Your first mission then is to take a shipment of supplies to town - starting the course of the game’s missions.

The game operates on a very open-ended scope, meaning that you’ll go around the world map in your sweet ride talking to people and picking up new missions and tasks. You’ll fight bandits on the road, escort NPCs from point A to point B and so on. As you progress through the missions and gain money for performing odd jobs, you’ll earn cash that allows you to build up your truck, outfitting it with better guns, more fuel capacity, and more space to hold all of your spoils.

Unfortunately, the mission structure is extremely limited. You’ll spend most of the time driving from one point to another delivering items and fighting a few enemies in between. The “errand boy” missions are far too prominent in the game’s structure making the overall feel extremely boring. Also, even though the game is open-ended, giving you a huge world to explore, there really isn’t much of a point as it’s pretty much mostly empty space.

The combat isn’t executed that well either. The enemies aren’t particularly challenging, in terms of AI, as most of them simply drive around in circles shooting at you. The only thing that makes them difficult is the copious amounts of armor that they have on them. Some of them take a LONG time to die, making the battles (that aren’t particularly fun to begin with) seem to drone on forever.

Graphically, Hard Truck: Apocalypse is pretty decent, as it appears to be a section that the developers chose to focus on at the omission of the gameplay. The vehicle models are nicely detailed and the explosion effects are pretty good, too. Some of the environments are also pretty good, although most of it looks pretty empty.

The sound is also pretty solid for the most part, as the music sets the mood for the game well and the sound effects are handled well. However, the voice acting is terrible, with monotone performances and some incredibly cheesy dialog.

Hard Truck: Apocalypse gives “barren wasteland” a whole new meaning. The game is very dull and void of any real fun. The game map is empty and the mission structure is lame. All in all, this is a game to pass on.

Gameplay: 4.5
The mission structure is extremely dull, the game map is empty, and the combat is no fun.

Graphics: 6.5
The vehicles are nicely detailed and some of the environments look pretty good. Unfortunately, most of the barren wasteland is, well, barren.

Sound: 6.0
The music and sound effects are decent and work for the game, but the voice acting and dialog writing is well below average.

Difficultly: Medium

Concept: 5.0
While the “Mad Max” concept of the game seems cool enough, the gameplay is just too lousy to make it work in practice.

Overall: 4.5
Hard Truck: Apocalypse is just too boring to recommend to anyone looking for a good car-combat game.