Okay, let me start off by saying, I love this game, simply because I have nostalgia for it. It was once of the first PC games I had an interest in, quite an introduction, I know. But I am not going to let that get in the way of looking at the game objectively.
First off is the title, it is labelled on Steam as New York Bus Simulator. No it isn't named that, this is City Bus Simulator 2010 New York, not really a big deal it is more of a nitpick but it is usually a sign of things to come when the developers cannot name their game correctly.
The game has campaign, free drive and mission modes...
CAMPAIGN (WARNING: SPOILERS)
[spoiler] You play as Carlos, the New York City bus driver, the first chapter starts off with Carlos being called into the depot by his boss, Lewis in order to take care of a compromised bus, after a communications malfunction, Carlos returns to the depot only to be scolded by Lewis for leaving the bus on its own, after returning to the area where the compromised bus was Carlos finds that it went missing. He calls another worker of the depot, presumably a manager or a supervisor, named Jack who seems to sympathise with Carlos much more than Lewis did and instructs Carlos to find the bus or Luke, the bus' driver. The story then involves taking over bus routes for Luke as he went missing or being a back-up driver and along the way Carlos meets a woman named Isabelle who very quickly starts developing feelings for Carlos. When the main plot returns, Carlos ends up running into the missing bus in an alleyway about half-way through the game and finds various clues such as a phone number that belonged to Luke, eventually all of these clues point to a bigger picture. In Chapter 7, after a date with Isabelle, Carlos returns to the depot to find Jack, the manager from earlier, talking with someone in secret on the phone, earlier on in the campaign, Carlos mentions to Jack the bus in the alleyway and Jack questioned how he found it. You later find, after driving a bus route in Chapter 8, the missing bus again parked in a closed street, it is there that we find out the truth, Jack and Luke were part of an operation to use the stolen bus for a bank robbery and were arrested, Lewis congratulates Carlos and Carlos once again meets up with Isabelle in Times Square at a hotel where the two presumably get it on behind closed doors. [/spoiler]
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The Campaign, for a bus simulator, is quite cheesy, it is the last thing you would expect for a game with "Bus" and "Simulator" in the title. There are quite a few quality issues with the campaign. The obvious one is the fact that TML and Aerosoft, the companies that made this game are both German companies and it shows in the product. They couldn't have hired better translators? Really? There are many spelling and grammatical mistakes in the subtitles during the campaign, more just a nitpick, but quite jarring, it honestly looks like they translated the German text using Google Translate. The tow truck you drive in the campaign constantly switches names, first it is a service car, then it is a tow truck, or at least, service car is what the subtitles call it since the character voices call it a service "bus", now how did they screw that up? It is so obviously not a bus. They didn't re-record the lines?
The next issue with the campaign is how it is obvious that most of the characters are being voiced by one person. This one guy even voices some of the side characters that have no names, there is one point at the start of Chapter 5 where the guy is voicing one of the side characters and puts on an accent only for the accent to just piss off a few seconds later and it is back to his normal voice, which is literally Jack's voice in game.
FREE RIDE AND MISSION MODES
The free ride is exactly what is says on the tin, select a bus, hit a route and go wild. There are some neat secrets and one particularly neat unlockable here also that I won't spoil, although I have no idea if this was a glitch or if it is supposed to happen or I am just forgetting something but I remember there being more than the Nova Bus in the free ride, in fact, there was, because I was able to retrieve the files of my old physical copy of this game and find the other vehicles in there and import them and they work now. The mission mode is kind of like a mini campaign almost, although not quite, it does star Carlos and Lewis but it is more so doing jobs for Lewis rather than a plot.
TECHNICAL ISSUES
Now getting to the part that is the main source of the negative reviews for this game. I had no where near the amount of experiences most of the reviews are pointing out, particularly with Quicktime Player but that could be because I had a physical copy of the game before. I will point out this issue because it is the reason I bought the game on Steam, if you are going to play this game in 2021, DO NOT buy a physical copy, if you buy a physical copy, the game requires you to enter a serial key, most physical PC games that don't use Steam do but it isn't in an installation wizard, you have to enter the key in on Aerosoft's webpage for it which no longer exists, so literally, physical copies are unplayable. Across my old physical copy back on my old computer and playing the game again on steam, I had encountered several technical issues, a lot of the ones you see if you have watched Vinny's stream of the game in the past will happen. First off, Quicktime Player. As I said before, I had a physical copy of this game on my old computer and when I got my new computer, I imported most of the files from the old one including Quicktime Player so I hadn't had any issues, just one installation and I was in but I know the struggle, if any of you had watched Vinny's stream, you would know the stream started off with him trying to install Quicktime Player and the game constantly failing to recognise it and it appears most of the reviews had that issue too. Other issues include falling through the ground on the tutorial mission, which also happened on Vinny's stream and it is easy to get stuck on things, although that can be solved by hitting the ALT key to jump (And yes, ALT is the jump key). Frequent crashes also seem to be an issue although in my time playing the Steam version, I only had one crash and validating the files seemed to have fixed it. I emphasise though THE STEAM VERSION, because I had a lot more on the physical version, particularly, the game would always crash at the start of Chapter 6 and I could never progress further than that. I had one glitch just today also. Playing Chapter 8 on the final bus stop, passenger gets stuck on the stairs leading into the bus and I am forced to leave about 3 passengers behind. I also don't like how sensitive the steering is with a keyboard, and no, there is no options for steering sensitivity.
FINAL VERDICT
Overall, while I have a soft spot for this game, objectively speaking, it is not a good game, there are technical issues aplenty, the voice acting is belchworthy and the quality control was so obviously not there. As I said before, I love this game purely for nostalgic reasons, I had bought it on Steam again to re-experience it since, as I mentioned before, physical copies no longer work, but if you are looking for a good bus simulator, your money is better off spent somewhere else like Bus Simulator 18 or OMSI 2.
