Motorcycle Mechanic Simulator 2021 Review (Nintendo Switch)
Have you ever played a game and asked yourself why? Why does this exist? Why did someone make a game on Switch that doesn’t work? Why am I so angry playing a game about fixing and building motorcycles? These questions, plus so many more, were the only things running through my mind “playing” Motorcycle Mechanic Simulator 2021. To be completely fair, I’m not a motorcycle person, nor am I really into “realistic” simulations of various occupations. However I can appreciate those games’ existence because they actually, you know, work. Motorcycle Mechanic Simulator 2021 doesn’t work on Switch and is something you should avoid. Seriously, I’ve never been so equally angry and bored at the same time as this title managed to achieve.
The whole point of Motorcycle Mechanic Simulator 2021 is that you run a motorcycle repair shop. This simulator tries to present the entire game as a “realistic” simulation, right down to the complex parts and pieces that make motorcycles run. I say realistic in quotes because, while it’s presented as a realistic simulation, the insanely poor controls make it nearly impossible to achieve almost anything. Motorcycle Mechanic Simulator 2021 originally was released on PC, where a mouse and keyboard scheme no doubt helps with controlling things. On Switch, this did not transition well at all. Simple actions like moving the camera or moving the object you’re controlling (for instance, to pick up a wrench and bring it towards a nut or bolt) moves insanely slowly. It also doesn’t help that every movement feels inaccurate; you always feel like the controls are fighting you.
Motorcycle Mechanic Simulator 2021 is further a broken mess by the other gameplay aspects . It takes an INSANE amount of time to load. In my time with the game, it was normal to have 2-3 minute loading times just to get into a very basic motorcycle repair. It then takes a long time to return to the main menu. Maybe this could be excused if you loaded into a richly detailed, hyper-realistic garage and super-detailed motorcycle. None of these things are found here. You load into a garage that looks fine at its best, something that looks closer to an ok-quality mobile game. The same could be said about the motorcycles you work on. Yet, the fact that you have to wait such a crazyamount of time to simply load into a game, and it looks the way it does, just adds a level of disappointment to the whole experience.
There’s also the issue of clipping when you test the bikes outside of the garage. Besides running incredibly poorly, the moment the motorcycle gets outside the garage results in you being partially inside the ground. This issue never goes away and actually gets worse the more you ride the motorcycle. In one instance, I rode a motorcycle for about 5 seconds before getting glitched into the ground and then the game proceeded to crash. To be fair, that was the only instance when trying to ride the motorcycles where it completely crashed. Unfortunately, the game crashed a number of other times during my review, at completely random and unrelated times. One time it crashed when it reached the main menu screen. It feels like the whole package was never really optimized.
When Motorcycle Mechanic Simulator 2021 isn’t fighting you on controls and crashes, there’s a semi-relaxing game in there, albeit a very slow-moving one. While the controls move everything very slowly, when you do get parts in the right spot there’s a relaxing pace/tone present.
Is there much more to say about Motorcycle Mechanic Simulator 2021 that’s positive? No, not really. While there’s a relaxing tone to putting bikes together and I’m sure someone absolutely obsessed with motorcycles and motorcycle repairs could be intrigued by the title, Motorcycle Mechanic Simulator 2021 is such a broken, poorly optimized experience to find much fun in. I spent most of my time incredibly angry at the controls that constantly fought me and the ridiculous loading times to get into those controls. There are a lot of really great experiences to play on Nintendo Switch but Motorcycle Mechanic Simulator 2021 isn’t one of them.
