Road Maintenance Simulator Archives – Xbox One Mag

Beyond the fields of agriculture, aviation or road transport which have been able to democratize the simulator around unifying concepts in the collective imagination, it is hyper specialization that prevails. Various independent studios have thus made the specificity of their simulator their main argument, in the hope of tickling the curiosity of a fringe of players with oh so strange expectations. That’s good, we’re part of it.

So here we go to tell you about the experience of driving Road Maintenance Simulator on Xbox Series X. Published by Aerosoft, a well-known German house of second-class simulators, Road Maintenance Simulator was developed by Caipiranha Games. We owe this studio, also German, a few PC titles mainly focused on horse riding and aimed at young people. In short, nothing in the developer’s CV had so far had any attraction to roads and more particularly their maintenance. Everything needs a start and on paper, things are looking pretty good: an open map, eight vehicles with very specific characteristics and missions based on the fundamentals of this good old DDE. Note that at the launch of the game appears the logo of the Germanic road services, which makes us say that we – a priori – sought among the developers to respect in a certain way the codes of the trade.

Playable only solo, Road Maintenance Simulator does not offer thirty-six options. Apart from adjusting the sound levels and possibly inverting the Y axis of the camera, there is only one thing to do: start the game. Here we are, immersed in first-person view in the area reserved for road services. Garages, a warehouse and offices await us there. It is at the door of these offices that a mission is selected from the four randomly offered at each visit. We are offered, for example, the replacement or straightening of traffic signs, the securing of a work area, the more or less extensive repair of the bitumen, the manual collection of waste, the renewal of the markings on the ground or even the pruning of trees along the road. Some missions may, if necessary, include several of these operations at the same time.

Once the mission has been validated, it is advisable to take the wheel of the appropriate vehicle. Road Maintenance Simulator has eight of them, which are rather convincing replicas of the machines officially used on construction sites in Germany and elsewhere. Simple dump truck or one equipped with illuminated signage, heavy goods vehicles, compactors, machines dedicated to marking the ground or cleaning guardrails… There is a good dose of variety here. Added to this is the equipment that should be loaded depending on the mission such as a wheelbarrow, traffic lights, a screwdriver, various road signs or even garbage bags and telescopic pliers to combat the incivility that strikes also the Germanic roadsides.

It all sounds pretty decent on paper. This is the case until you realize that the very commanding objectives of the first mission do not act as a tutorial, they represent how the game plays. To fill the truck with the necessary tools , you have to park it here and not there. Otherwise, the objects in question cannot be accessed. The retrieval order is fixed, too. But the most boring is yet to come, especially when it comes to defining a work perimeter with beacons and traffic lights. It is not possible to deposit part of the material gradually on a work area; we are forced to park the truck and unpack everything by hand, one thing after another. We do have a wheelbarrow that can move three objects at a time… But not all of them! It is therefore necessary to strike several tens of meters on foot, slowly, with a barrier or a traffic light in the hands, to install elements that one would have liked to be able to deposit with the truck. Be careful also to choose what you want to deposit first, an object taken in hand cannot be put back in its place. It is necessary to go and place it.

Road Maintenance Simulator is an ultra-directed game, from the beginning to the end of each mission. It reaches heights of cumbersomeness when you have to replace ten road traffic signs (all different) that you can only select in the order in which they appear. It is therefore impossible to place two panels that are only a few meters from each other if they are not consecutive in the order of storage. We are therefore witnessing infinitely long missions, armored with ubiquitous comings and goings. One can certainly praise in certain cases the “respect” of the desired simulation aspect; is it really necessary to force us to place ten bases, then ten panels, also traffic lights in two parts, for an operation to fill a hole that takes at best two minutes? Don’t forget that all posted signage must in most cases be removed before leaving.

Despite its correct conduct and its missions that are altogether interesting in principle, Road Maintenance Simulator is scuttled by compartmentalizing its objectives to such an extent. It makes things quickly boring. Besides that, Road Maintenance Simulator certainly offers an open world but without any interest since nothing happens there apart from the missions. And then it’s small, made up of a loop of motorway and a few secondary axes that are quickly explored. We go around the country in 10 minutes flat, with a strange feeling because it’s far from ugly for a simulator and rather fluid. On the other hand, the monotony of the landscapes (it’s green, without any trace of life) on such a small space makes us say that a clean graphic rendering is at this stage the least of things. Apart from the very sparse traffic, there is nothing. No house, even in the distance, no billboards, not a bus stop, not a level crossing; not a small (even ugly) village to cross. Nothing.

It is therefore difficult to be passionate about Road Maintenance Simulator once you have tested the different types of mission. With a little more work on the background, it could have been interesting for fans of simulators on consoles, in lack of titles of the genre. As it stands, we can hardly advise you. Even the few proposed music add boredom. Note, however, the effort on the translation of texts into French, resulting in fairly humorous mission descriptions.

Imposing a certain rigor on the player is obviously part of the essence of a simulator. Do we therefore need to compartmentalize the experience until the player wonders if we take him for an incompetent? Interesting on paper for its very specific purpose, its selection of vehicles and its correct technical realization, Road Maintenance Simulator puts itself outside of that a big shovel on the head. Ultra-directed, he quickly bored – if not frustrated – the most benevolent of players. Some tasks aren’t just tedious, they’re mind-numbing. We stay there for a handful of hours to test each type of mission at least once, and that’s it.