Honest Review, Compared to Gearhead Garage - With YouTube Video for Invoice #6

[WildKarrde]

Ok, so I'm a huge fan of Gearhead Garage. I've bee waiting and hoping for a new version of it for at least 12 years now, but obviously at this point it's not gonna happen. When I first learned about this game a few weeks ago, I was estatic! My hopes were high, and when it released today I only lasted a couple hours before I bought it. Now I'm here to tell you how I feel about it.

On the surface, it does seem very similar to Gearhead Garage. You get jobs, in which ou need to take parts off cars, and put new parts on cars. Not real cars, but make-believe cars that loosely resemble real cars. For those of you that don't remember, Gearhead Garage didn't originally have real cars either, the only real cars in the game were third party unofficial modifications. So far, looking good.

Personally, my favorite part of Gearhead Garage (other than 3rd party mods) was the ability to buy crappy cars at auction, fix them up and resell them at auction. After 25 or so missions, I haven't seen anything like that in Car Mechanic Simulator 2014. It's just been mission after mission after mission. The only thing I see to spend your har earned money on is mediocre upgrates to make you 5% more money on jobs, make bolts loosen 5% faster, or other trivial upgrades. In other words, there really isn't much of a reason to make money in Car Mechanic Simulator 2014.

Don't get me wrong though, the game is somewhat entertaining. It's not extremely educational, if you know virtually nothing about cars it will give you a basic idea of where car parts are, what parts are named, and a very basic understanding of car diagnostics, if you pay attention. But a lot of aspects of the game aren't very obvious. I've changed the oil on more cars than I can count, but it took way longer than it should have to find the oil drain plug in this game, and once I did it looked NOTHING like an oil drain plug looks like in any real car I've changed the oil on. I also didn't find out there was an oil draining pan until I read about it on this forum. This is good, and bad, a double edged sword. The game does not hold your hand through the car repair process... it gives you the opportunity to figure things out on your own. Still though, it would be nice if something had told me I could click on the oil catch pan, instead of wasing $100 on every oil change for a clean up fee.

Also, the test driving physics are laughable. They made Grand Theft Auto feel like Gran Turismo. It's a nice tough... but don't expect any of the cars to handle even remotely realistic. It's a gimmick, at best. A cheap way to see the quality of some of the parts on the car. Not entirely useless... just not well executed. But what can you except from a game that released for $15?

Overall... the game is decent. It's the best car mechanic game since Gearhead Garage... but it's not more fun than Gearhead Garage... not even AS fun as Gearhead Garage was, IMHO. The graphics are ok. The part location accuracy is decent. The gameplay mechanics are not bad. It's a combination of point and click searching, along with some puzzle solving. Once you start figuring things out, you can build a decent strategy to solve most car problems. The game still throws you for a loop though. Sometimes because it's a genuinely good puzzle. Sometimes because the game should have let you know where to go to find an option.

I want to fully endorse the game... but I'm having a hard time doing that. For $15... I guess it's ok. If I knew what I know now, I'd wait for it to go on sale at $5, but I had to find out for myself. I'm not strongly disappointed with my purchase... just a little. I'm still hoping the game will get better with mods, expansion packs or maybe after a few more missions... but I'm not holding my breath either. If you loved Gearhead Garage... you might like this game. But personally... this game has mostly just whetted my appetite to try to get Gearhead Garage running on my PC again. Other than that, I think it'll be a decent diversion when I want a game to just burn time with. The mechanics of the game are ok, if you haven't played Gearhead Garage then I think you might find it a refreshing turn of pace from the average lot of games on the market today. If you did play Gearhead Garage, and loved it like I did, then I think you'll appreciate this game, but find it mildly disappointing... as I did.

Anyway, enough with my ramblings, here's the gameplay video I made to show you how the game plays. I've played the game for roughly 3 hours now, and all the gameplay is the same as this, simply rinse and repeat.

http://youtu.be/mPZUCuDjfMI

[Surgeon]

Thanks for the review. I'm still kind of on the fence about it. I really like the idea, but seems like something that might get repetative after a couple hours.

Have you taken a look at Automation in Greenlight?

[rmz]

Thanks for the opinion. This looks like a very slow and boring game. Exactly what I could like. One question though, is the music original in-game game music? Driving me insane after 30s of the video...

[Alt Muller]

My thoughts exactly. This game is fun, but you could do so much more stuff in Gearhead Garage. If only there was a way to run GG on Windows 8...

[CodeSculptor]

From what I have read about it until now I won't buy the game now without:
1. More differences between cars (each model should have different engine - from many types like in real life - or at least there should be car groups like real-life VW-Audi where different brands share the same engine).
2. Some (maybe at least scripted) fabular surroundings like popular example of Gearhead Garage's grandma that has air filter to change and doesn't know what to do. Those missions even could be scripted so one pattern would generate several types of missions with different people, cars, circumstances.
3. A purpose - like extending garage, making it more exclusive (for example you start with small ugly garage and have clients with old crappy cars, with time you advance and get wealthier clients and more expensive cars).
4. A reputation and cheating possibility - you can - like in real life - fix car with used part even if it should be new or replace parts which were ok. You can do it because you like to or can be pushed to it by hazard of bankrupcy. This way you risk you reputation which would depend on your performance measured in repairing efficiency (how long car or its part would be ok).
5 ... IDEAS :)

I'll be waiting for some addons/extensions/dlc or CMS 2015 :)

[WildKarrde]

Surgeon původně napsal:

Thanks for the review. I'm still kind of on the fence about it. I really like the idea, but seems like something that might get repetative after a couple hours.

Have you taken a look at Automation in Greenlight?

I pre-ordered Automation Supercharged in Sept. 2012... that's a purchase I've never regretted, lol.

rmz původně napsal:

Thanks for the opinion. This looks like a very slow and boring game. Exactly what I could like. One question though, is the music original in-game game music? Driving me insane after 30s of the video...

Yes, the music is from the game, I didn't add it. Yes, it is very annoying, lol.

[ScruffyBamboo]

I totally agree that some sort of system where you buy junkers, analyse the parts, change the ones that need changing, then auction them off (basically, flipping cars) would make this game 100% more fun.

The crazy thing is - almost everything is already in the game to do that. It would be a snap to code it.

I'm only at order 25 or something, but if it's just order after order for infinity, I can see it getting a bit boring, pretty fast.

As much as I'm interested in the add-ons they've mentioned (4x4, turbo), a "car flipping" system is what I'd REALLY pay for.

[WildKarrde]

Since writing this review I have gone through the trouble of installing a Win98 Virtual Machine to play some Gearhead Garage. I must say, that game is antique looking, compared to this, but it's still got it.

This game has ALL the potential in the world to be absolutely fabulous though. I'd love to play GHG on this game engine. They just need to get some more varied cars, with true to life drivetains (not all the same engines, with transverse mounted engines for RWD, etc...) and an auction to give the player some freedom on what to work on. The auction house made GHG for me. It could make it for this game too.

[Rosso]

WildKarrde původně napsal:

Since writing this review I have gone through the trouble of installing a Win98 Virtual Machine to play some Gearhead Garage. I must say, that game is antique looking, compared to this, but it's still got it.

To be fair, I feel like the devs want to do 'their own thing' with the game, but at the same time, mechanic games are such a niche market that it's not like you have a whole lot of room for maneuverability anyways. Hopefully they'll be going in that direction (and from what I've seen they actually might) but it's hard to say right now.

[WildKarrde]

I think they have done a decent job of "their own thing" with the 3D garage and vehicle fixing. GHG would have been so much cooler if you were able to explore the car like you can in Car Mechanic 2014. The game engine for this game is a SLAM DUNK!! I just think they are losing so much potential by not including such obvious featues that GHG had. As much as I rave on about GHG, it wasn't the "jobs" that made it fun. It was finding so many different ways to make money at the auction... and the massive modability of the game. I dunno if this game has the modding ability that GHG did, but with the right expansions that could be achieved as well.

[Oparator Stalker]

I have seen the vid for gear head and hot rod. And what I see is clicking in and out of a box and parts just apear on or off pretending to work on them. So really, just picking what you want on and presto there it is. Compairing a simulator to a presto build a car and race it game.

So here is were I see alot of people talk about, but not so much for the comperision. Because here you have to trouble shoot and fix the problem like you do in a real mechanic shop. That is what a simulator dose, it simulates a reflection of what it might be like. If I use flight simulator 98/95 and fly a 747 upside down between the sears tower and john hancock over Chicago. They game may tell me I can, dosen't mean you can. It is to reflect would it might be like flying a 747, not be it. Can't argue with Microsoft that the plane should have counter mesures and missels. Come on really....

So maybe I am not understanding what every one is nick picking about.

Maybe it is what your looking for, as in yeah the trouble shooting mechanic work, but also the ability to use the money you make, get a side project build going so you can sell or race like some of the smaller Mechanic shops do for real. That way you can spend what you make on some side project cars of your own, than making money you can't spend in this manner.

Is this a addition you would think be cool? Is this what your talking about?
Because if not, it is comparing nick pick. That would be like comparing Flight simulator to USNF air force...

[ZeroZeroOne]

Thank you for the review! I was hesitant on buying the game since it's the daily deal. All I really want is Gearhead Garage. Maybe I'll wait until it's even more deeply discounted.