Car Mechanic Simulator 2021 is exactly what it says on the tin, and it's pretty fun. I'm new to the series, so I don't have any thoughts about what this version is like compared to previous versions. As a result, I won't share any of the complaints I've seen from some that this versions doesn't change enough from the 2018 game. I picked it up as a bundle with Gas Station Simulator when during Gas Station Simulator's release weekend.

Car Mechanic Simulator 2021 (CMS2021) is yet another in the neverending line of seemingly mundane simulator games that are absolutely dominating the PC market at the moment. Likely with significant audience overlap, CMS2021 came out just ahead of the more popular Power Washing Simulator and Lawn Mower Simulator but just also just after the streaming niche darling, King of Retail. CMS2021 shares much in common with all of them and if you're familiar with any of the others, you'll see the similarities in CMS2021.

You start out with some sort of beaten down, inherited garage. You have no money. You take a few odds and ends story jobs with scant lore behind them to complete as you get, slowly, introduced to more and more mechanics. By the time you complete the, at times droning, campaign missions you should be nearly fully equipped with cash and skills and upgrades to tackle nearly any project you want. Of course, as-is the case with all of these games, you can decide at any time to tackle on the game at your own pace and choose your own missions. In that regard, CMS2021 is a bit more constrained. You can only choose from a small number of available, randomly-generating jobs at the beginning and you lack most of the tools to work on most of the games content for the first several hours.

You'll be at least 15 or so hours into the game before you can even begin to access the game's second tier of skills, if you choose the normal career mode path. The game itself is fun but the progression is a hair too grindy for how mundane the sim truly is. There's no staff hiring like there is in other simulators and there's not really much at all to the business side of things so you'll really never be doing anything but screwing and unscrewing things from cars. Which is enjoyable but at some level highly repetitive. Let's get more specific.

The game operates on a series of nested radial menus (they call them pie menus in game). Depending where your cursor is hovering, you can left or right click to bring up a menu that allows you to take on a variety of actions. Mounting tires, taking off alternators, fixing suspension components, taking off fenders etc. You do all of these with a few clicks here or there and a spin of your mouse around a radial menu. In essence, everything is almost a cleverly designed excel sheet. There's no reason you 'need' an animation for any of these as the game really has 0 physics engine or anything to itself. You click something and something happens, that's it. There's usually a wind-up time or maybe a few screws to click or you have to click and hold the mouse to trigger and complete the animation. On rare occasion, there are some minigames which generally come down to well timed clicks of the spacebar.

The gameplay isn't particularly engaging. Less so than most other simulators. And with no business side to the game really, it can be hard to truly analyze where the 'fun' is. Well, the game is gorgeous. It's very pretty. The cars are well designed and there are a plethora of available high quality mods from the community as well. There's a sort of discovery and sense of accomplishment that comes from taking apart a broken down junkyard car and repairing it piece by piece with items you find in junkyards or purchase from online retailers with the pennies you've scrimped from doing oil changes all day. Fixing old junkers is really where the game absolutely shines.

The game spends a lot of time teaching you the ropes, what screws into where and what common problems vehicles have and how to fix them, by giving you story missions that pay more than the average (both in actual cash as well as in XP). These get grating after awhile because without anything to save up for or strive for the game's mechanics aren't all that interesting. Most of the upgrades seem to just allow you to do basic tasks even faster as-if the game itself realizes it's kinda boring and unengaging. You can mount things faster or repair parts instantly or move faster or examine parts faster. All things meant to speed up what is essentially the core gameplay. Play this game a bunch so you can get upgrades that decrease how long it takes to play the game. At first they feel like quality of life skill upgrades but eventually you realize they're sort of meaningless since it's not like you're working on time limits (like Hardspace: Shipbreaker). It makes it pretty hard to find out why you should even want to play anymore.

And then there it is. Like a shining beacon through the clouds, the real meat and potatoes of the game reveals itself about 3 hours too late. Getting custom orders, being able to fix junkyard cars and the auction house. Going to the junkyard, salvaging parts from every scrap heap, bringing them home to stick in the warehouse is fun. It's more fun when you bring home a junker car that you're determined to repair. Now every job you do is to make a little extra cash to go back to the junkyard and find that bumper for your project. Or, if cheap enough, buy the bits and bobbles you need at retail price. Now you see why those 'renovator' skill upgrades were important, because suddenly for the first time in the game you can actually repair pieces instead of always buying them brand new.

Once you get to the point where you can work on your own cars, the game takes on an entirely new character. One that is infinitely more fun than before. Finding rare cars that are only available in junkyards and barns is even more fun. I was immensely lucky that on my first junkyard trip, with enough cash to buy anything, I found two of the rarer cars in the game in the Bolt Rollet and the Magnum Tempest. I brought both bodies back to my shop and then the entire game became all about, "How can I restore this?" It was almost a different game entirely. If I could've hired some interactable staff to keep working on odds and ends jobs the game would've been even better as I would've had a new layer of management while also making more in profit to work on my hobby projects.

Bringing home a junker with missing doors and fenders and busted windshields only to turn it into a six-figure prize machine was such a rewarding experience. Some part of me felt as if I'd done it in real life. Pouring a real life ten hours into restoring a digital car with the parts I was able to scrounge was a seriously all-time rewarding gaming experience for me. Seeing the finished product was very, very cool. And that's just when it clicked. Now I feel a little hooked. I wanna keep doing it. At least with a couple more cars until I get to the point that I'm sick of playing.

Why the game is as slow as it is for as long as it is, I have no idea. It'd be one thing if you had some form of used car lot or something on-site that you had to sell your inventory out of. If you were buying kinda junky, but not actually junkyard, cars to fix up and resell. But most of the first ten hours you're fixing brakes and changing fluids for $40-$150 bucks each. It feels very tedious, especially because the game doesn't clue you in on what's to come. You just kinda feel like you're more a Jiffy Lube employee than car mechanic entrepreneur. If I hadn't toughed it out as long as I did there's a real chance I would've stopped right round hour ten and called this a two star game or so. Luckily, I persevered and made some really cool shit. Took some cool photos, some of which you can see on my photomode.io account.

For a future iteration, I really hope they do two things. The first is adding some more layers to the game on the business-y side. They don't even have to be very deep or all that well developed. They just need to exist. Something else I can sink my teeth into besides changing tires and draining oil. Something that helps break up the game's monotony a tiny bit. Just a tinge of variation would immediately make this an all-timer in the simulation-tycoon hybrid world. The second thing is to add more customization options. More custom options for paints and interiors. Being able to change interior fabrics, interior designs, lighting, bobbles like transmission knobs or what the dash is made out of. Right now there's actually a surprising lack of customization features throughout, which after awhile makes each version of the same car feel the same. Two Bolt Rollets will basically be identical after you finish with the engine. Sure you can try and drop a V12 versus a V8 in it. But since you never actually drive the cars any and you don't get any real bonus for choosing one engine over the other, it's sort of all the same.

The most fun part of the game is relishing in your creation after you've turned a hunk of shit into a pristine award winning car that would be on one of those weird car auction shows on ESPN2. That feels so good. It'd feel even better if you could really customize the vehicles appearance instead of just, essentially, choosing between pre-rendered swatches and skins. If I could put mohair and fuzzy dice into a vehicle instead of every vehicle having the same three different seating options and that's it. Customization is sorely, sorely lacking.

But overall, CMS2021 is quite fun. It truly redeems itself. It's the One Piece of video games. The first ten hours are kinda tough to get through but if you can get there you're only, still, a mediocre five hours away from greatness. I don't recommend people start off in sandbox, as the resource management helps fuel the fun of the gameplay, but the game is a slog until you get to 'endgame.' But once you're there, it's a lot of fun. Truly. I could spend a sickening amount of time fixing up digital junkyard cards. In fact, I think I will.