You might not guess it from the usual content that I put up on this blog but I’m something of a gearhead, owing to my rural roots where I was set free with all sorts of cars and motorbikes to terrorize my ample backyard. This also meant that any damage or broken parts were my responsibility so I developed something of an affinity and appreciation for the world’s most popular form of transport. Whilst this didn’t translate into a love for racing games (although I did lose a lot of time to the original Grand Turismo when it came out) I do fondly remember playing Street Rod, a game that allowed you to do up cars and race for pink slips. Car Mechanic Simulator 2015 looked to capture some of the essence of what made that game great and whilst it’s not the exact same thing it does live up to its namesake.
You’re a budding car mechanic who’s just set up shop, having all the tools you’d come to expect from a modern car servicing center. People call you up with their car troubles and then leave their vehicles in your care. It’s then up to you to diagnose the issue, find the faulty parts and then repair them to the customer’s satisfaction. The money and experience you get from each job helps you to improve your workshop and, in turn, allow you to start working on your own cars. If you’d ever wondered what working on car would be like Car Mechanic Simulator 2015 is a pretty good simulacrum for it, minus all the downsides of getting covered in oil or cutting yourself on old car parts.
Car Mechanic Simulator 2015 does a pretty good job of prettying up the Unity engine, giving the usual 100 coats of wax to the car models that is typical of most modern car-related games. The main area you’ll be working in is a bright workshop that’s honestly far too clean to have been used as a garage for any length of time but it emulates that kind of sims-esque feeling that many of these simulator games seem to strive for. There’s a surprising amount of detail put into what’s under the hood as well with most of the cars having almost fully fleshed out engines, exhausts and suspension systems, many of them being unique to that particular car. It might not be Crysis levels of graphics but it’s more than enough to get the job done, so to speak.
In terms of core gameplay Car Mechanic Simulator 2015 plays pretty much how you’d expect it to: you get jobs to fix cars and then you do said jobs and get paid upon completion. Taking a car apart can require you to do several different things like putting it up on the lifts to get to the underside of the car or removing certain parts before you can get to others. Everything works on a condition system whereby parts deteriorate as their condition worsens which is how you’re able to pick them out. Later on you’ll have to diagnose which parts need repairing by using various tools in your shop or by driving the car around a test track. Doing jobs earns you experience as well which gives you an upgrade point every 1000 XP to spend on things in your workshop. After a while you’ll unlock new modes so you can work on your own cars and even sell them at auction.
As a simulator for car repair Car Mechanic Simulator 2015 does pretty much what it says on the box, giving you the experience of what it’s like to repair cars day in and day out. Whilst I’d say it’s somewhat welcoming to beginners, given the fact it does things like highlight parts you need to remove and provides full part lists for the early jobs, you’ll definitely benefit from having a modicum of understanding of what various parts of the car do and where they’re typically located. This can lead you astray sometimes as I spent a rather long time looking for the fuel filter in the fuel tank (it’s in the front for most cars in this game) however I don’t even someone trying to figure out where the crankshaft is if they’ve never worked on an engine before.
Probably the biggest flaw with Car Mechanic Simulator 2015 is the levelling system which, to be frank, takes far too to get anywhere. You see no matter how big or small the job is you’ll always get the same amount of XP, requiring you to do about 10 jobs per level. Sure you also get 1 XP for every part removed and mounted but that accounts for maybe 10% of your total XP meaning you’ll still need to do about 10 jobs per level. Considering that the thing that really attracted me to this game unlocks at 9000 XP this means I’d need to play for about 9 hours before I got to the point where I wanted to be and, honestly, with the lack of variety in jobs early on I just couldn’t stomach that much grind to get to the point I wanted to get to. It’s a shame since reading through the forums there does seem to be a lot of variety there it just takes far too long, in my opinion, for that variety to be available to you.
I probably went into this thinking it’d be a lot more like Street Rod than it actually would be as whilst you can drive your cars around a test track it’s extremely limited, both in terms of where you can go and how the different cars feel in relation to each other. Indeed when I’ve said this to friends the general reaction is “what did you expect” as the name is pretty much spot on for the experience you’ll be getting. For some this will be enough however for me I felt like the payoff was just too far away and I just couldn’t sustain my interest long enough through the grind.
Car Mechanic Simulator 2015 does exactly what it says on the box, giving you the experience of being a car mechanic. As a simulator it’s exceptionally well done, capturing many of the aspects of car repair whilst not being as unforgiving as its real world counterpart is. However some of the more interesting parts of the game are hidden behind the levelling system which is too basic and takes far too long to get anywhere meaningful making it very easy to put the game down and forget about it. I enjoyed my time with Car Mechanic Simulator 2015 however if you don’t have an interest in cars or simulator type games then you probably wouldn’t find much more to love in it.
Rating: 7.5/10
Car Mechanic Simulator 2015 is available on PC right now for $19.99. Total play time was approximately 2 hours.
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