Like all good simulator games it feels hopelessly overwhelming and inaccessible at first and ten minutes later it's settled into boring routine so you can safely stick a podcast on. This one's particularly checklisty which remains fundamentally satisfying but is notably even less stimulating than other job sims. You can't really screw things up - it highlights wherever you've removed parts so you can't forget, and you can't place the wrong parts or in the wrong order. What challenge remains is in playing trial-and-error engine detective and figuring out where and what the fuck an ignition coil is, as you get no instructions for most repairs.

For being the fifth instalment in this series it still feels barren and unpolished. Cars kept spawning inside eachother and you have radial menus within menus within menus to do everything for some extra tedium. Forget context sensitivity, this game forgets that controllers have more than one button these days. Outside the garage there's a vague impression of additional features - I tried a test track that's 30 seconds long with a minute of loading either side - but most are walled off until you level up significantly which by my playtime would seem to require many hours and several dozen car repairs to reach. I think I'm good, game.

For all its faults though there's certainly a zen appeal and I did catch myself thinking "just one more car," multiple cars in a row, and its kind of neat seeing dozens of unlicensed knock-offs of recognisable vehicles replicated with interiors and all.