Powerwash Simulator VR Review

thesixthaxis.com:

I have to do chores now. My wife and son have watched me playing PowerWash Simulator VR for the last hour, and various questions have been asked along the way, such as “Why don’t you just go and clean the real garden?” and, “You’ve got your own car you could be washing, you know?” These are both valid points, but no one is going to pay me invisible game dollars to do that, are they?

The other thing that won’t happen in VR is that you won’t get wet shoes, and as it’s currently about 2ºC outside, I think Futurlab are saving the NHS and other health services a whole lot of money. So, what I’m really trying to say is, PowerWash Simulator VR is good, and not just for you, but for society as a whole. Not many games can claim that.

PowerWash Simulator has been proving that menial tasks make great games since 2021, but the move into VR feels as like the culmination of the game’s journey, where the art not only reflects life, but is near-as-damn-it the same.

This is a game about cleaning things. With a pressure washer. Using a variety of nozzles, hoses and attachments, you have to wash, scrub and generally titivate a series of extremely careless people’s possessions, stretching from vans and cars, through to entire garden renovations.

If ever a game would work well in VR, it’s PowerWash Simulator, and Futurlab has done an incredible job at getting the weight and feeling of pressurised water against dirty surfaces just right. You can often spray and pray, flicking the hose about with abandon, but there’s a weird satisfaction to working away at a particularly tough bit of dirt on some glass, or the gunk on an outdoor barbecue.

Each job has a series of requirements, all of which amount to cleaning every possible surface you can find.