The crew at SCS Software is persistent, I'll give them that. We had a hard time convincing them that GameSpy doesn't traditionally review bus driving simulators. Or, as they're affectionately known in the industry, "BDSims". I kid! They're not known as that because to my knowledge there is only one budget PC bus driving simulator in existence, and that's Bus Driver, from SCS Software (now Avilable from Direct2Drive).

Those guys wouldn't give up because they harbored a belief that deep inside of every hardcore gamer, the inner bus driver of our fantasies yearns to be free. Sure, we go about the motions: exploring everyday dungeons, slaying your ordinary robots and zombies, but in our hearts, in our heart of hearts, we hungrily desire to drive a bus. Carefully. On a prescribed route.

'Hey kids! Wanna see somethun' REALLY scary?'

Fire up Bus Driver and the loading screen will give you helpful tips about driving a bus, such as "A Good Bus Driver Obeys Traffic Rules." That's good to know. Personally, I always felt a bus driver passed the mustard if he stopped reading the newspaper when the light turned green.

The first mission of the game had me driving a school bus. I don't want to get into the intricacies of the plot, but (spoiler alert) there were kids, and they needed to get to school. I was overjoyed to discover that my bus had both a horn and turn signals -- I made ample use of the former. As for the latter, I experimentally clicked on my turn signal as I pulled out of the depot, and *Ka-Bling!* I was awarded points for "Proper turn signal usage." As I pulled toward the first stop I signaled a lane change and *Bla-Ching!* the points started rolling in.

This is a videogaming first: points for properly using a turn signal! They should use this game for the driver's exam. Here in California, the last documented use of a turn signal when changing lanes was in 1962.

I opened the doors (default: enter key) and schoolchildren started piling into my bus. I stared at them, stonefaced, while they boarded. "Just so you know," I rumbled in my scary adult voice, "Dennis Hopper rigged this bus to explode if it drops below 40 miles per hour!" With that, I punched the gas.

I haven't had the opportunity to really study the controls of a real bus before, but I'm fairly certain that city busses use some sort of "steering wheel" instead of the arrow keys. Driving with arrow keys is like slamming the wheel as far as it'll go in either direction every time you want to steer. What's awesome is that the physics are correctly modeled in-game: as I whipped the wheel from side to side, the bus rocked like a mobile home hosting a rave.

Hapless little children jangled around in there like peanuts in a can.