Car Mechanic Simulator 2015 was a big, positive surprise for me. I am not into car mechanic at all and don't know much about the different parts, their purpose and so on. Therefore, I was expecting a boring, frustrating experience for me.
It was really the other way around! The first half an hour was indeed frustrating, since a true tutorial is missing (one of the biggest lack of this game) and I was trying to figure out what I had to do and how I could do that. After having gone through this "first impact" and once I had a good understanding of the interface, I started enjoying this game experience a lot. More than an accurate car mechanic and workshop simulator, Car Mechanic Simulator 2015 is, in my very humble opinion, rather a puzzle / challenge game with strong car mechanic simulation elements and a bit of workshop management. Car after car, the player has to figure out which parts must be fixed and how to reach them quickly. Even though a list of parts to be fixed is always provided at the beginning, soon enough this will be rather the exception.
Every fixed car gives money and experience, which can both be used to upgrade the workshop and find out more quickly what's wrong in a car. At the beginning only few car models are available. Further cars will be available only, once given experience thresholds will be overcome.
Later in the game, cars can be bought in auctions, in order to fix and resell them for a profit. The game itself has no ending at all, which was something that I actually missed a bit. I would have enjoyed a career mode with targets and a story quite a lot.
The best part of this experience was actually learning from it. During the game, players like me, who barely know anything about car parts, gather a lot of knowledge of them, which is useful in the game but also in real life. Of course don't expect anybody to be able to fix his own car after playing this. Having an idea about car components and how they work together is still very useful, though.
Another strenght of the game is indeed the OST, which is of really of high level. You will find yourself being done with a car but waiting before exiting the game, just because one of your favorite OST songs is still playng.
I recommend this game to everybody, with the exception maybe of people looking for a very realistic simulation experience (for them the simulation level may be not enough) and to gamers who are not patient enough to invest the first half an hour in finding out how to use the interface. Since this game is quite old and more recent versions were published, you may want to look for a large discount on the price, though, which can be found quite often.
