When I first set eyes on this game ‘Recycle – Garbage Truck Simulator’, I had absolutely no idea what I’m going up against. Yes, it’s a garbage truck simulator however what the heck do you do besides hauling garbage? So, I played the guessing game and my conclusion is not much – that is there’s no real replay value. However, it turns out that there’s plenty of things to do like hauling garbage with different types of garbage trucks (small / large / crane), manage your landfill with three vehicles being the crawler, truck and bulldozer and, of course playing the role of a garbage manager. So, to my surprise, it’s a decent game however the user-inference and a game crippling bug can make you toss this game into the tip (excuse the pun).
So obviously, the game is all about hauling and managing garbage. However, I think developers and publishers rondomedia GmbH was also aiming for educational purposes like recycling, or better still, the life cycle of garbage. You may think what’s the big deal, however it did come to me as a shock that there’s a lot more than simply dumping rubbish in garbage cans. Garbage arrives in different varieties however you start off with a small truck hauling generic rubbish. Once you get deeper into the game, you unlock the different types of bins like plastic, paper and bio. Bio garbage requires a different type of truck to collect it however, and for some odd reason, the large garbage truck can also take bio (i.e. the small garbage trucks are the only ones that cannot pick up bio waste).
To unlock more features plays upon the levelling system. To gain levels is simply based on the amount of tonnage you collect and as expected, the higher the level, the high amount of tonnage to collect. However, rest assure that even though the tonnage needed to collect doubles at each level, the game correctly assumes that the amount of trucks available should be able to counter this. Also, the more you collect garbage, the more dollars you earn and this is the other characteristic of this game as no money = you cannot grow. However, because collecting garbage is the name of the game, both aspects (money / experience) goes hand in hand.
So, the way I visualise this is that the game is separated into ‘life cycles’ – meaning that you start off with a measly small garbage truck picking up generic trash. You can do this yourself or let the AI do the work. However, the disadvantage of letting the AI doing this is that the money earned is halved and the AI can only complete one route at a time. Doing this yourself, you earn all the cash and can take on multiple routes without the hassle of micro-management when letting the AI do it for you. Naturally to complete this is very, very slow however I believe it’s worth the effort in the beginning. Also, because the game plays upon real life, the clock starts at 9am and finishes at 4pm. So basically, you cannot collect garbage after 4pm period. You can drive around after 4pm and see the sights however that’s about it.
So, to control your truck is a matter of using the default WASD keys. To control the guy is a matter of clicking on the relative icons on the right side of the screen and the bottom to control the bins (lifting). However, being a simulator, there’s no option to use the indicators or even drive in first person view. However, the game plays upon obeying basic traffic laws like being fined for gunning a red light or even drive the opposite way through a one-way street. However, you can drive on the opposing lane or even on the footpath with no consequences so go figure.
When emptying the bins, there’s a small chance that the bins are not completely emptied therefore you need to ‘examine’ the bin just in case. Fail to do so, again, has no consequences other than the bin is still marked as ‘full’ indicated by the pulsing light. Here’s a lost opportunity as I feel it would be better to have a ‘population satisfaction’ gauge (or something to that effect) so if the bins are not completely emptied, you can lose cash because of this. This also goes with bins reaching 100% full as there’s no punishment otherwise.
The next part of the ‘life cycle’ is purchasing the landfill. This unlocks three additional vehicles being the crawler (armed with a crane to lift garbage), the truck (to dump the rubbish to either recycling, burn it or use it for bio electricity) and the bulldozer (to compress the garbage). Utilising all of these vehicles can be achieved by using the keyboard / mouse combo and the tutorial does an adequate job explaining this by reading the text on the screen and arrow markers. Why having the landfill is important is because 1) you earn cash to dump it in your landfill and 2) recycling / burning also earns you cash so you can get a double the cash.
The next ‘stage’ will be buying the larger trucks so you can use the large bins – very important as remember, tonnage = experience. During my play through, I only earned one small garbage truck and have about five large ones near the end of the game. Take note that there is no ‘ending’ however I was using the game’s achievements to set the benchmark. Once you dominate the field of those larger trucks, purchase the crane truck and parking lots for ‘fast travel’. Of course, you need to purchase as many route licences as possible otherwise you cannot collect rubbish for that area.
And here the game gets a little messed up. You naturally assume that purchasing a route enforces the area to dump rubbish – well that’s not the case. What you need to do is to ‘tell’ the good folks that you can dump rubbish there by assigning rubbish bins – that is, if you only assign the generic rubbish bins (via the management screen), the folks will only dump generic rubbish. What I normally do is, once I purchase a route, I assign all four types of rubbish bins say, a week in advance, to trigger the folks to dump rubbish (as indicated by a percentage). So, if you assign to collect rubbish, say the next day, it doesn’t give much time for the people to fill up their bins. As a rule of thumb, I give it about five days for areas that have little rubbish to dump (as indicated by the number of bins) to about three days to the areas that has a high rubbish rate.
Assigning bins, AI controlling trucks, purchasing routes, trucks and so on are all done via the management screen. Early on, I didn’t dabble on this screen much however later on, I let all my AI control all the trucks therefore this screen was my mostly used screen. Of course, early on, I normally drive the big truck manually to earn greater amount of cash but later on, I had enough trucks to earn just as much (remember AI controlled trucks only earns half as much).
However, here’s a major game breaking bug as, if you assign the AI to control the crane truck (the ones that picks up rubbish tips), there’s a very good chance that the AI never returns back to the depot. What this means is that you cannot proceed the next day until all AI trucks (and your controlled truck) arrive back at any of your depots – basically the game is now busted. And oddly enough, you cannot locate this rogue crane truck anywhere. So, you have been warned and unfortunately the developers have no intension to correct this.
To control all management aspects of this game is via the user interface and, unless you love micro management to the nth degree, this is another sore point for this game. Everything is so micro managed it will get on your nerves. I’m not going to explain every aspect however I can give you a small taste – transferring the truck from one depot to another. One assumes that transferring a truck from depot to depot can be done by a drag / drop feature – well not in this case. It requires to open up the management screen, select the ‘garage’ tab on the left-hand side of the screen, select the desire truck to be transferred, select the ‘down arrow’ of the destination and finally the truck is transferred. Yet this is not in isolation as the entire game is built upon multiple clicking to get the desired outcome.
Visually the game is decent to look at however it’s also broken as well – examples are the anti-aliasing can be very smooth at times and other times, very jagged for no apparent reason. The shadow effects can be shown in full force then suddenly to disappear to reappear again for no apparent reason. Also, changing the settings during in-game is a no go and the only way to do this is to exit the game entirely only to reboot it back to the main screen. Why you don’t have an option to exit to the main menu is beyond me. Also, the game is wholly not optimised so your graphics card’s fan will always whirl like it’s taking off.
The sound quality is average at best – nothing too spectacular to write about. Yet the engine sounds are quite weak and, after a patch, you get to hear the beeping sound when reversing. There are not much of background chatter as no matter what setting you have for the music, it seems that this drowns out everything else. However, kudos goes to the musical scores as, even though they sound like elevator music, it does suit the game quite well however, like all good things, it can get on your nerves and unfortunately there’s no option to create your own radio station.
Because there’s no real ending to this, you can literally go on forever however I cannot think any good reason why you want to do that. I used the achievements as a baseline so once completed, I deemed the game as ‘conquered’. That said, the game’s pacing is extremely slow with a bucket load of micro-management. I think what the developers was trying to aim is there’s a lot more to it than just collecting / dumping rubbish – there’s a whole network of systems to be concerned about.
Whatever the case maybe, this game certainly tailored to the very niche market and granted, there’s plenty of busy work to do (especially when you need to manage a number of trucks). Plenty of lost opportunity here however it’s not a game to be totally written off as there’s a lot of evidence of love poured into this game. However, because the game is now regarded as ‘abandoned’, meaning there won’t be any more patches, it’s a game that you need to take huge precautions to play it, especially that game breaking bug where the AI truck never returns to the depot.
5 / 10