PowerWash Simulator VR is the way the game is meant to be played
FuturLab’s surprisingly addictive first-person wash-a-thon has made a safe yet successful transition to VR.
You can never underestimate the importance of cleaning. Because if watching Kim and Aggie’s How Clean is Your House on Channel 4 for the better part of a decade taught me anything, it’s that a tidy life well and truly does make for a tidy mind. This sense of satisfaction is the exact same attitude FuturLab’s oddly brilliant PowerWash Simulator tapped into when it first launched on PC and Xbox last year. It gave players good cause to clean away their worries and worked beautifully as a way to decompress. This ethos only continues now that the game has been ported to Meta Quest headsets.
Admittedly, of all the video games to make the jump to virtual reality, PowerWash Simulator simply made too much sense. I can still remember firing it up on Xbox Game Pass last year not knowing what to expect, before imagining within my first hour of play just how brilliant the act of jet washing mud-laden objects, completing odd jobs and purchasing more powerful nozzles would be without a TV and controller separating me from the tasks at hand. As expected, PowerWash Simulator VR makes this transition with ease.
Before diving into the changes it’s important to state that this is still the same game as before, with you playing as a lowly cleaner picking up jobs throughout the town of Muckingham in the hopes of creating the best small-time power washing business possible. You’ll start off cleaning simple dog houses and vans until you eventually take on larger jobs like cleaning subway platforms and Ferris wheels. Washing the dirt away requires time and patience as it always did, but playing on a Meta Quest 2 made it even easier to fall into that familiarly relaxing routine.
Nozzles can now be grabbed from the new tool belt and attached to the end of your power washer with simple hand movements, although tapping a button on your controller to switch between stayed the most convenient method. Then there’s how you must place your hand in from of the nozzle and click LT so as to rotate the nozzle either sideways or longways, yet even this is made a tad redundant given that turning my wrist 360 degrees in real time always felt the most natural. FuturLab offers up plenty of new options control-wise, yet it was my natural instincts that won out most of the time.
PSVR 2 is already losing to the Meta Quest 2 in the VR headset battle
Spray and pray
Playing the console version there were times where I would struggle to find that last pesky splodge of dirt in a level, spending way too much time looking fort the exact spot in need of cleaning and tapping the glow button (intended to make finding it easier) to no avail. However, thanks to the 1:1 accuracy playing in VR provides, getting into those awkward crevices such as the underside of a swimming pool’s border was made much easier. Especially when taking on a rather big cleaning job with another person in the online co-op, cleaning up feels less like a chore.
If there’s one downside to PowerWash Simulator VR compared to the original it’s that the visuals aren’t all that great. PowerWash Simulator was never one to go for photorealism or a particularly ambitious art style, instead falling somewhere in between. Levels do lose a lot of fidelity now that they’re being rendered in VR, but then admittedly I was playing on the Meta Quest 2 and better results might exist on the slightly more powerful Meta Quest 3.
Then there’s the fact that, at least at launch, PowerWash Simulator VR doesn’t throw in any of the additional DLC the console versions have already been treated to. That means no cleaning SpongeBob Squarepants’ house, Cloud Strife’s bike from Final Fantasy 7 or any of the recently released Back to the Future tie-in cleaning projects. Sure, FuturLab has been clear that all this DLC and more is coming to the VR version in future, but it’s no doubt a missed opportunity to well and truly make this the definitive way to play.
Even still, if you’re someone who has only ever heard of PowerWash Simulator and have been left wondering what the fuss is about, or if you’re an existing player wanting to be more immersed, PowerWash Simulator VR is an excellent way to get your cleaning fix. It’ll only get better, too, once the additional DLC levels are added, and the various control options ensures there’s bound to be a setup designed to help make it the most natural experience possible for you. Honestly, while I probably should be cleaning in real life, having the ability to play PowerWash Simulator in VR is sure to prove all too tempting. It makes an already great relaxing experience even better.
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