Unfortunately Hellforces would not run, whatever I did, so I was forced to skip it.

CaRPG... Amirite?

So Hard Truck Apocalypse is a post-apocalyptic vehicle-based RPG of sorts; you don’t gain experience points or anything, but you do gain money from selling loot, which you can buy better parts for your vehicles essentially increasing your stats. Weirdly it’s a whole lot like A.I.M. but with post-apocalyptic trucks instead of alien mech-minds. It’s also a lot better than A.I.M. which is good; unfortunately a whole lot better than A.I.M. isn’t that much a compliment.

You start the game with a truck - surprisingly - armed with a machine gun, which you can upgrade as you go, and are given quests to carry out; most of the quests are basic RPG stuff, fetch me this, kill this, accompany me here etc; but these are just the abundance of side quests, you also have main quests to carry out that I will assume have some semblance of story to them.

As with all open world games like this, I drove off into the wilderness as soon as I was able to, and drove directly up some mountains, very much like I did with the Mako in Mass Effect. Unfortunately the game had invisible walls on most of them mountains, so you are unable to drive up them all. As you drive along enemy cars will attack you; I assume they belong to some evil gang or opposing faction or something as there is never really any reason for them to attack you.

As I mentioned earlier, loot is a thing in this game, and most enemies will have loot for you to pick up. I ended up with an inventory full of wood and potatoes before long, which weirdly both sold for a higher price than the guns I managed to scavenge later on. All settlements will have merchants for you to sell your loot, buy new upgrades, repair your car, and buy fuel from.

The game was very well received in Russia on its launch 7 years ago, so I will have to take their word that this is a good game deep down. What I saw of it was a great idea, but kinda boring.