I’ve reviewed all sorts of simulation games over the years, mainly of the farming nature, I’ve also been a fireman, a truck driver and also a train a driver. However for the past week I’ve a mechanic fixing cars in the ‘does what it says on the tin’ titled Car Mechanic Simulator.
I don’t drive and I never will thanks to my stupid eyes so I know as much about cars as I do running a marathon in under two hours, thankfully the game is accessible to all levels of knowledge, with a normal mode, an expert mode and a sandbox too. The normal mode is actually has two variations, with one coming with a tutorial which is well worth taking advantage of if you have never been near a garage.
Once you have familiarised yourself with the different areas of the garage and equipment you can begin to work on cars. The premise is pretty simple, spending the early stages of the game accepting jobs that come in while saving up enough money to upgrade your garage and tools and earning enough XP to use on the skill tree. Improving your skills will help you decrease the amount of time it takes to complete jobs, helping your earn money quickly. You can also expand your garage which gives you the ability to take on more jobs.
As different jobs come in you’ll need to diagnose the issue, which is sometimes given to you by the customer, while the rest of the time you’ll need to work out where the issue lies. Sometimes it’s a case of just replacing a broken part, or ordering in the part you need via a computer before you can progress the job.
The game does a great job of keeping things accessible for players of all abilities, of course it helps if you are familiar with different engine parts but even if your aren’t you’ll still be able to progress. Using a controller to complete some of the fiddly tasks can be frustrating but generally the control scheme is well designed and lets you move around pretty quickly.
Once you have fixed a car up you can take it out for a test drive to make sure you have solved any problems, however the handling of the cars is so poor you sometimes wonder if you have made things worse!
As fun as it is fixing other people’s cars, the real action starts when you have enough cash to visit Auction houses to purchase cars to work on and sell on for profit, there are also barn finds that you can go to which lets you unearth some impressive cars to restore and sell on. It’s a shame there aren’t any licenced vehicles to work on but nevertheless it’s interesting learning about how cars are put together.
Even playing on an Xbox One X does do anything to make the game look good, it falls in line with most of the simulation games I’ve played in the past, the game also has the most annoying soundtrack I’ve experienced, so if you do play this game, turn the music off straight away!
Despite the relatively small issues I have with the game, if you have any interest in cars you can easily lose hours to this and have a really good time. The jobs are endless so you are never short of anything to do, the game is only £25 so you’ll easily get your money’s worth from it, it proved to me that I’ll never be that interested in cars, but I got to find out in the cheapest way possible!
Car Mechanic Simulator
24.99
Pros
- Very Detailed
- Lots to learn
- Great Satisfaction when you complete jobs
Cons
- Doesn't look great
- Can be fiddly at times
