Developer: inImages
Publisher: Play Way
Available on: Switch
Tested on: Switch
Garage Mechanic Simulator – Review
Garage Mechanic Simulator is brought to us by developer inImages and publisher Play Way. Will it deliver on the promise of being a fun experience, or will it fall into the same class as Bus Fix 2019? Grab your wrench, don’t forget the oil pan and attempt to make your garage as successful as possible thanks to quality service and great repairs. Simulator games like these have a select audience and it takes a very good one to break that mould and gain some traction. Spoiler alert, this one sadly doesn’t.
Story
This will go by very quickly as there is no story. You start up the game, get a brief tutorial about how the game works and things you might have to know and that’s it. You get a message saying good luck and you are set on your way. While, yes, games like these don’t necessarily require a story, there isn’t even some sort of main objective for you to follow.
For instance, in Car Mechanic Simulator you can choose whatever car you want to fix, but there will always be a mission that serves as a test for everything you learned up until that point. Garage Mechanic simulator has none of this. Just the same repetitive fixes over and over again. The only thing you get are these minor objectives that really don’t motivate you to try at all, or ask you to prove you learned something for the fixes you did. They are very basic, gaining one level or fixing 6 tires, to name a few. It feels very lackluster.
Graphics
Garage Mechanic Simulator looks okay at best, there’s not a lot of detail, the cars all look bland, the garage is boring looking and there’s not much happening on screen. All the cars look cheap and are just reskins in different colors, even though there are more cars to unlock if you level up, there really isn’t a point to do so in the first place. All the parts on the cars look the same too, so while the exterior looks a bit different, all the chassis and the engines look alike.
Sound
The “soundtrack”, if you want to call it that, is horrendous. It’s the same few beats over and over again, with a little drop here and there. When you finish a repair job, you always hear a car rev its engine, and even that is the same for every car. The game even uses the same sound effects as Bus Fix 2019 with the sound of your tools and the cars you fix being used repetitively.
Gameplay
Garage Mechanic Simulator is yet another simulation-based game and in a market where there are tons of simulator games, it can be very hard to stand out and get the proper attention the game requires to flourish.
This is where Garage Mechanic Simulator and similar games should shine the brightest, but sadly everything falls flat when you start playing the game. It gets repetitive after the first fix you do. There isn’t anything fun or challenging about it and playing feels more like a chore than actually having fun.
The controls are absolutely horrendous. While the touchscreen controls are decent, the only thing you use them for is to change the camera angle. When you try to use the touch screen to select some parts it just doesn’t work. You will press a certain part and the game will highlight an entirely different part, sometimes even on the other side of the car.
The actual controls are just as bad, if not worse. Cycling through parts is very unintuitive and doesn’t feel right at all. It’s not even clear what the game will select as a part, you just kind of have to aim your camera at the part, then push the left control stick up and hope that it selects the correct part for you to work on. This could have been easily fixed by making it so that the game highlights what part you select or by making a tab at the side of the screen that opens up, where you can follow what part is selected.
Everything gets so tedious that even getting through a few repairs just feels like a drag that you want to end as quickly as possible. There are levels for you to gain, where you unlock more parts to use, but even that is futile as there is no incentive at all to improve or gain these.
Conclusion
Garage Mechanic Simulator just dropped the ball in all aspects. From the lack of incentive, the horrible controls, and the boring soundtrack, nothing falls into place in this one. It gets very stale very fast and doesn’t have any lasting appeal whatsoever. This is sad considering games like these can really give some fun experiences and even learn you a thing or two. The only thing Garage Mechanic Simulator will teach you is how not to make a simulation game.
Garage Mechanic Simulator - Review,
Related Items
1 Comment
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.
Mind is blown. It’s hard to see the difference between the screenshots and pictures of real cars. Such enhanced graphical prowess.