Car Mechanic Simulator 2021 - China DLC

The weird part: a 71 on Metacritic, but 95% on Steam makes total sense

Car Mechanic Simulator 2021 is exactly the kind of game where a normal review score can undersell it, and the Steam score can look almost ridiculous.

Metacritic sitting around 71? Yeah, I get that. This is not some massive reinvention. It’s not flashy. It’s not fast. A lot of what you’re doing is clicking bolts, pulling parts off, checking condition percentages, replacing the bad stuff, and putting everything back together. If you’re reviewing it like a broad, mainstream game, a 7-ish score feels fair.

But then you look at Steam, and it’s sitting at 95% positive from 35,636 reviews, with an Overwhelmingly Positive label. And honestly, that also makes sense. Because Red Dot Games and PlayWay S.A. know exactly who this is for. They’re not chasing everyone. They’re serving the person who looks at a busted car and thinks, “Yeah, I want to figure out what’s wrong with that.” The loop is simple, but it works: diagnose, disassemble, repair, restore, maybe flip the thing for profit. And when that loop clicks, it gets weirdly calming.

This is the series’ signature trick. Real car work is dirty, tiring, expensive, and usually involves at least one bolt that wants to ruin your day. Here, it becomes this first-person, single-player sandbox where the mess turns into structure. You strip the problem down piece by piece, and the game keeps feeding you little hits of progress. Bad part found. New part installed. Engine starts. Money comes in. Garage expands. It’s not deep in a dramatic way. It’s deep in that “I accidentally spent my whole evening on one repair job” way.

And that’s why I land at a 7.5 out of 10 overall. Not because it’s secretly perfect. It’s not. It’s repetitive. It’s clunky for newcomers. And if you’re a hardcore car nerd, some of the inaccuracies are absolutely going to poke you in the eye. But as a focused repair-and-restoration comfort game, it hits its people dead center.

If PowerWash Simulator is a warm shower, this is therapy with a toolbox

The easiest comparison is PowerWash Simulator, because both games understand the same basic pleasure: take something gross, broken, or neglected, and make it right again. PowerWash is simpler. You point, spray, and watch dirt disappear. It’s cleaner, easier to recommend, and way less intimidating. Car Mechanic Simulator 2021 asks more from you. You have to diagnose problems, buy parts, manage money, use auctions, check junkyards, poke around barns, visit salons, and decide whether a car is worth fixing up and selling.

That extra layer is the difference. If you’re even a little bit interested in how cars are put together, this game gives you more to chew on than just “make dirty thing clean.” There are over 4,000 parts and more than 70 cars, plus a huge pile of DLC if you want to keep feeding the machine. And I do mean machine. This is one of those games where the content doesn’t feel like a campaign you finish. It feels like a garage you keep coming back to.

It’s also quietly educational. Not in a classroom way. Nobody’s stopping the game to lecture you about drivetrains. But after enough jobs, you start understanding the shape of a car. You learn where things live. You learn the order parts come off. You start recognizing patterns. That’s a big reason the repetition doesn’t always feel empty. Even when the actual input is just clicking highlighted screws and swapping components, your brain is building a map.

But here’s the catch: if that sentence already sounds boring to you, do not force it. This game is not going to save you with story, characters, racing thrills, or constant surprises. It’s a workbench game. It’s for people who enjoy focus, routine, and slow progress. If you hate repeated tasks, you’ll bounce hard.

Today, it’s still the safe pick — just don’t expect a giant leap from 2018

Back in 2021, this felt like the obvious next stop for the Car Mechanic Simulator crowd. Today, it still holds up as the safest recommendation in this niche, but with one big warning: this is more of a polished, expanded follow-up to the 2018 entry than some bold new version of the idea. If you played the previous game to death and wanted a full rebuild from the frame up, yeah, you may be underwhelmed. The innovation is limited. The basic rhythm is very familiar.

For new players, though, that matters less. If you’re picking one version now, I’d point you toward Car Mechanic Simulator 2021 on Steam first, mostly because that’s where the audience verdict is loudest and clearest. That 95% positive rating isn’t just decoration. It tells you the people who wanted this kind of game got what they came for. And because the game has so much content around auctions, junkyards, barns, car salons, garage upgrades, and restoration flipping, it’s easy to see why players rack up hundreds of hours.

The rough part is the onboarding. There’s almost no real tutorial, and the localization can be awkward, so if you come in knowing absolutely nothing about cars and you don’t have patience, those first hours can feel cold. The game kind of expects you to poke around, learn by failing, and accept that not every process is explained like a modern blockbuster would explain it.

So my version advice is simple: if you’re curious, get 2021, not because it’s revolutionary, but because it’s the most stable, content-rich version of the formula. If you already own 2018 and only want huge new ideas, maybe wait for a sale. If you want a zen garage where one repair turns into three hours, this is still the one.