I've played this game 17 years ago (2008) back on my old PS2 and recently picked it up again to burn some time and have some fun.
Big Mutha Trucker's 2 is a very funny arcade game and indirectly prepared me for ETS/ATS, getting into trucking simulation. However, comparing this with a real truck simulator such as the products by SCS Software is really hard to do, yet there are some things which are shared in common.
First things first, this game is not meant to be a realistic truck simulator nor a AAA game, so don't treat it as such. What you get is a funny "truck-themed" PS2 arcade game from early 2000s with a small yet very diverse map with funny events, actions, locations, dialogues and characters; accompanied by a great soundtrack, radio stations and licensed music you even can listen to separately in the menu.
There is no story and the gameplay is very repetitive, but that's okay since its an arcade game. Your goal is to make money to bribe the jurors, getting your beloved Ma out of jail. You earn money by trading goods with profit and the fastest money making factor - the on-time bonuses. The On-time bonuses are what you get you money in the fastest way possible. You have 3 bonus options to choose from before starting a ride to another town/dealer. Truck Me Gently (x1 $), Truck Me (x2 $) and Truck Me Harder (x3 $). The more bonus, the less time you have to deliver.
The last option is what gets you money fast, but is also the most risky one as it requires knowledge of shortcuts and you avoiding all sorts of things which try to stop you or lose time at least.
However, you can even avoid the whole trading aspect of the game and just drive from one dealer to another all the time, however this gets annoying at some point and you want to "rest" at a dealer.
For completing the game in the fastest possible, take a look at the products which make the most margin somewhere else with their quantity and price and the most expensive products first as they usually make the most margin and you avoid staffing up your trailer with products which are you can sell for more, but not as much as these. ALWAYS buy and sell the illegal item (which unfortunately is only limited to 1 unit). Use the SPACE key to compare prices and see possible margins.
There are 3 types of trailers (flatbed, cooled trailer and tanker). Flatbed has the most products available at the dealers, however exactly this can take some time at dealing. Tanker is the worst option IMO as most dealers have less quantity and products of these available. The cooled trailer is the best option as it offers you 6 pricey goods, with which you can make money quite fast and good but I still like flatbed sometimes for more variety.
After a while, you can see the pattern which dealer has what product to offer at discount and which dealers wants this for most price and you can design your route on that. Although there are still random price changes included. And a notice, don't have product for too long on your trailer. I once wanted to stack up cheaper goods and sell it on this specific dealer however it ended up as massive profit loss, which I can only reason in that prices may get more expensive over time globally.
A good tactic is choosing always the dealer which is the closest to your current location (as time bonus is always the same - no matter how long the journey) and set your route over the map in a way where you can sell products with most margins.
Having this said, you see that trading is a big aspect of the game. And yes, I would even say it's more of a trading game than a trucking game and marks a spot where it clearly differs to ETS/ATS.
You could also make money with several casino mini-games, however I'm not a fan of that.
Some more tips. Most of the truck upgrades are completely useless or do not give what you paid for. Smuggler's compartment is the most silly one as the police almost never is able to confiscate your illegal product. To make it worth it, you would need to get raided more than 10 times or so. Also the Nitro upgrade barely gives you any boost and an annoying flashing HUD element at each start of the journey. I highly recommend you to take the trailer space enlargement to carry 50% more goods on your trailer as soon as possible. And the gritter is also a good thing to prevent damage to your rig. - A cool upgrade could have been upping the amount of illegal items you can carry to 2, but wasn't implemented sadly.
Important to say and a thing which annoyed me is that after you paid all bribes (and thus completed the main mode of the game), you will not be able to get into it again and buy or enjoy your upgrades. All remaining money is gone. You also aren't able to discover new missions anymore. Yes, you can start again with no problems but its a bit bad since the game has no save game slots. So if you want enjoy the game a bit before loosing all, wait before you pay off juror in Clearview (Evil Bob).
Oh, and the game default resolution is 640 x 480p, but you can actually scale up the graphics to 1280 x 720p in the settings. Runs fine with Windows 11 on PC.
All in all, a great game to burn some time.
Yee-Haw, Mutha Truckers!
