car mechanic simulator 2018 free download

#Car mechanic simulator 2018 free download how to#

Sure, I have encountered far fewer game-breaking crashes than I did, and performance has increased by a good third (the difference from unpleasantly juddering to OK at high settings), but today five hours of progress were dashed against the rocks when the screen turned black, with alt-F4 my only option. No, the reason I urge great caution is that, even after six emergency patches since last Friday's launch, it's in poor shape indeed. It's a game I want to play more than any other since Prey, 2017's personal highlight so far, and something of a ray of light in what has felt like a fallow few months (again, only personally). The game - the mesemeric, deeply satisfying act of examining a car to identify the worn-out parts, of removing piece after piece after piece to get to the component you need, of taking that out and either repairing it (with a click on the workbench) or buying a replacement, then doing it all in reverse - survives the clunk.

That is not why you shouldn't buy CMS18 now. A wonderful, captivating core, sometimes struggling to make itself known through a veil of awkwardness.

From the awful music to the oddly dour gloss of the superficially lavish graphics and, most of all, a cumbersome and inconsistent interface that strips CMS of flow - this is a game getting in its own way. Not so for CMS, although I concede I may well be guilty of far too much presumption.

I felt the same about Euro Truck Sim and American Truck Sim for the longest time too, although I think pennies have dropped there now, looking at what they have planned for New Mexico and the work they've put into rescaling the environments for maximum road trip zone-out joy.

#Car mechanic simulator 2018 free download how to#

I say all this with no small amount of starry-eyed rapture, but my strong suspicion is that the creators of CMS don't realise quite what they've made here, let alone how to best capitalise of it. I could look under the hood of my 11-year-old hatchback now and, for the first time, have some basic sense of what's what, where formerly all I knew was the dipstick and where the wiper fluid goes. Oh, so that's what makes that rattle, that's what brakes are made of, the foot bone's connected to the leg bone, and so forth. Most of all, there's a real sense of journey to fixing a car, both in the time and observation required to do so, and, for a mechanical ignoramus such as I, a sense of ambient learning as I do so. I imagine the unseen customers' gratitude and awe as I return their restored vehicle to them, which means more than the clump of money I can only spend on car parts anyway. What was broken is now mended, all thanks to me. And there's something that ATS doesn't quite conjure the real satisfaction of a job well done at the end of it. A jigsaw of components, taken apart and put back together, a picture of mechanical near-perfection taking shape before your eyes. Slow, methodical progress towards a destination, the gradual identification of worn-out parts and replacement thereof with shiny new ones. I couldn't have been more wrong: CMS is, like American Truck Sim, all about a state of zen calm. Tedium incarnate, the sole reserve of car spods and/or people with infinite patience. The Car Mechanic Simulator games never held the same appeal - that of motion, roads, wilderness, cities, freedom - because they're essentially about being locked inside one garage, memorising the names and shapes of various bits of metal and plastic. It's not real, of course - I don't have the money worries, the exhaustion, the awful motels, and most of all the grim certainty of doing this every day forever, as opposed to a psychic holiday - but nonetheless I dream of that being my life. Its fusion of the realistic and the romantic results in a sense that the unhurried, low-pressure, solitary conveyance of goods across iconic (and also humdrum) American landscapes is the solution to all my anxieties. My central criteria for what I'd call a job simulation game is whether it instils within me a desire to kick my own employment to the curb and pursue that profession in real life.Īmerican Truck Simulator, a game about very slowly moving some boxes from point A to point B, is the contender to beat here, of course. That's true whether you have any interest in or knowledge of cars yourself (I know I don't). But at the same time, you should absolutely keep a close eye on this singularly captivating and cathartic game, and return once it's been made road-worthy. It's a hot mess (as the developers themselves admit) - enough of a hot mess that I beseech you to steer clear of for the time being. I've spent a day and a half so far with Car Mechanic Simulator 2018 and, though I really do dig the core experience, enough's enough. Consider this piece to be 'what I somewhat think', or perhaps a demi-review, if you don't go in for our larky terminology.