For some games sequels make perfect sense. Games like Halo, Grand Theft Auto, and Splinter Cell are a few examples. Big Mutha Truckers is not only an example of a game unworthy of a sequel, but a game that should never have existed in the first place. I can’t begin to think why THQ decided that this particular game was worth even a second run in the bargain bin. The first game was a boring combination of racing big rigs, trading goods for cash and poking fun at trailer trash. The sequel follows essentially the same pattern as the first, and turns out just as worthless.

In the first game Ma Jackson, the proprietor of the prosperous Big Mutha Trucker Company, decided to retire and staged a competition to see which of her kids would inherit the company. The challenge consisted of driving from town to town, buying goods here and selling them there. Whoever accumulated the most money inherited the business. The only problem is that after the contest Ma Jackson was arrested for tax evasion, 7,973 parking tickets, 232 counts of lewd conduct and six counts of being a comedy stereotype. The money was confiscated as evidence and the only way to get her out is to raise enough money to bribe the jurors on the case.

You start with several thousand dollars in your wallet and a big rig parked in the Jackson’s hometown. From here, you have three options, literally three options. There’s no walking around town and talking to different people, no realistic or immersive interaction. At the entrance to each city you are presented with a menu bearing three options: Store, Bar, Leave. That’s it. Left arrow, right arrow, big green button. This game has interaction out the wahzoo.

Option one takes you to the store. In your hometown, this happens to be a fat-ass cousin of yours with three teeth and a stained muscle shirt (sans muscles). He gives you tidbits of storyline, but essentially exists for one purpose: to be the holder of the buy and sell goods menu. This menu mixes things up by using the directions of Up and Down. Browsing through this manifestation of pure genius you’ll see goods to buy like dirt, bottled water or biodegradable buckshot. Each item you can buy or sell is labeled with a commodity price rating like Deal of the Day, Bargain, Average, Risky or Rip Off. This gives you an indicator (a fairly explicit indicator) of how good of a deal you are getting. There is even a Commodity Value Graph that tells you exactly what the good sells for in all the other cities so all the bothersome economics thinking is done for you. All you need to do is drive there and sell it. Sound fun yet? I thought not.

The second option takes you to the bar, where you meet the first and subsequent jurors. Besides that, this is where you pick up the occasional side mission and where you can engage in the rather boring task of gambling in card games against the computer. The side missions basically require driving from one city to another in the racing mode, while trying to beat a particular time or while collecting alien icons or some other menial task. We’ll get to the racing in due time, but suffice to say the side missions are not so fun that they drag this particular stinker of a game out of the gutter.

The gambling is implemented correctly (meaning only that they got the rules for blackjack and poker right). Other than that, there’s not a positive word I can say about it. There were no high stakes gambling options and the juror bribes were so high that gambling was really not an option. When a juror wants $100,000 and you are betting a max of a hundred bucks a hand you can imagine how long and painstaking a process it would be to win the amount necessary. There was a diverse set of games ranging from blackjack to poker to high card, but if you want a gambling game play a gambling game. Why the hell would you want to have to drive to a different town just to play a different card game? The answer is you wouldn’t. You’d play a video game where you could pick the card game you wanted from a menu and be done with it.

The only part of this game that can even be considered a game hilariously falls under the option labeled “Leave.” This double meaning implies the need to leave the room or to leave your home to return this “piece” to the gaming store whence it came. It is unfortunately, the only area where this game really ventures into the realm of anything we would consider playable. In the game, the word connotes going to another town via the racing engine for which the developers have mislabeled themselves experts. Not that there is anything particularly wrong with it, but it is quite a bit boastful to go around touting your skills at making a racing simulation when the end result is a semi racing game where one of your oft used skills is one where you smack people around with your trailer full of cargo. This may be fun, but it’s not simulation.

Upon reflection it’s not even really that much fun. It could have been, sure. When you think of a trading game like this you can’t help but think of an open-ended environment like those of the Grand Theft Auto series. Were that the case, the driving part of this game might have been more fun. Instead, you are limited to a specific road you follow from one town to another. There are a few shortcuts, but nothing to go nuts over. After a few runs, the lack of variety starts to set in and the game does a nose dive fast.

There are a few gimmicks that attempt to break up the monotony of the racing engine. Things like time challenges on each run where you can select difficulties like “Truck Me” and “Truck Me Harder” (as far as I can tell the only reasons for the mature rating). There are other things too like bonuses for smashing cars in combos and giving hobos a ride on the trailer. Unfortunately, if you fail the time challenge you lose all the bonuses you earned from the helping of hobos and the destruction of property. In most cases, the course time and the bonuses are mutually exclusive goals so you end up ignoring the interesting things on the road and focusing on trying to get to the finish line in the time allowed.

Upon reaching the finishing line, there is a parking bonus challenge where you earn cash if you can park the big rig in the time allotted. Some of these are harder then others but the cash you win is negligible to the amount you need to bribe each juror, so you can basically ignore this particular challenge.

The parking challenge completed, you are once again presented with our three choice menu. You pull up to the store, sell your goods, buy whatever’s cheap and leave. You repeat this process while every once in a while unlocking a new route or changing or upgrading your rig. That’s it in a nutshell. No bells, no whistles, just boring repetitive driving. So boring in fact that I actually nodded off twice while playing it one Sunday afternoon. If that doesn’t give you an impression of the lackluster nature of this game, then I’m at a loss. If you are still unconvinced as to whether this game is worth a damn, take my word for it and leave this game in the trailer park where it belongs.