Oh, hey, PowerWash Simulator lets you clean up for war criminals now
With its Final Fantasy VII Remake expansion, PowerWash Simulator lets you clean up the villains' messes
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Every Friday, A.V. Club staffers kick off our weekly open thread for the discussion of gaming plans and recent gaming glories, but of course, the real action is down in the comments, where we invite you to answer our eternal question: What Are You Playing This Weekend?
It’s a question tailor-made for the Kevin Smiths of the gaming world: Who ensures that all the machinery used by gaming’s various evil empires looks so shiny? Who buffs the sci-fi battle tanks to gleaming, fascist-friendly perfection? Who busts their ass so that every weapon of mass destruction the heroes desperately fend off looks utterly immaculate?
You, as it turns out.
At least, the “you” who plays the free new “Midgar” expansion to first-person clean-em-up PowerWash Simulator, one of the strangest examples of gaming corporate synergy that I, personally, have ever experienced. (And I play Monster Hunter games, which never met a whacko Street Fighter integration they didn’t like.) The corporation, in this case, being Square-Enix, which publishes PowerWash Simulator, which presumably made it fairly easy for developer FuturLab to set up an expansion set in the world of SE’s beloved classic, Final Fantasy VII. (And specifically in the extra-glossy world of 2020’s Final Fantasy VII Remake.) The basic, soothing verbs of PowerWash Simulator are all still in evident abundance: You methodically spray incredibly dirty things with soap and a stream of water until they’re clean, mercilessly hunting down every little scuff mark or lurking piece of grime. You climb on ladders. You wonder how a simple bar can get so damn filthy—and then impose order on the chaos with a white-noise-ish stream of purifying H2O.
The only difference is that now you’re doing it for, well … the baddies. With the exception of the aforementioned bar level—in which an unseen Tifa Lockhart hires you to clean up her iconic 7th Heaven watering hole, while plying you with ecoterrorist propaganda—all the jobs you’ll be taking during “Midgar” will be at the behest of the Shinra Electric Power Company. Which, if you’ve never played the games, is essentially the answer to “What if the power company also controlled a municipal government and had its own military and Fox News analogues?” Some of these tasks—like a wash job on the bike from both games’ infamous motorcycle sequences—are at the behest of the company’s one token good employee. But two of them are straight up about cleaning up massive war machines while on the payroll of one of Shinra’s many innovative psychopaths.
The expansion doesn’t shy away from it, either: As you clean the massive Airbuster tank, dutifully wiping grime off its numerous machine guns and bomb launchers, you’ll get regular updates from your clients about how it’s going to be used to kill the shit out of the good guys soon. The base PowerWash has these little updates, too (they help break up the pleasant monotony when you’re halfway through cleaning an entire playground, sweep by deliberate sweep). But they were mostly about funny little interludes and not, y’know…war crimes. I’m not trying to wring my hands about this or anything—presumably, the Guard Scorpion murder tank works just as well whether it’s shining like a brightly polished brass button or not—but it is a damn weird tonal shift for one of the gentlest video games ever made.
Enough moralizing, though: How’s the wash? As a PowerWash aficionado, I can attest that these are, indeed, fun cleans, especially the two tanks, which are big, elaborate machines that you can look at in incredibly fine detail, cleaning each of their village-destroying laser cannons one by one. It’s kind of like having an in-game model viewer that someone dumped a bucket of unidentifiable gunk on; the action-figure appeal of climbing all over these big beautiful bastards (and even making their guns move and hatches pop open for better cleaning) is undeniable. One of the magic things about PowerWash Simulator is that it forces you to reckon with how detailed the objects around you are; that love letter to video game artists is only more intense when you’re dealing with fantastical weapons of war. The only real shame in the package—besides the, uh, moral one—is that PowerWash stuck to its typical “no music” approach here; having some of Final Fantasy VII’s classic soundtrack pounding while you cleaned would make aiding and abetting a planet-killing propaganda machine for cash go down all the smoother.
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I’m a week behind everyone else, but Metroid Prime Remastered has its hooks in me, and I’m unlikely to stop until I hit 100%.
Prime was already one of my favorite games of all time, and this remaster is just an incredible way to experience it. Every time I see one of the new incredible enemy models it makes me smile. The music remains absolutely fantastic. The feeling of reading the scan logs and piecing the story together as you go is such a great way to experience the narrative.
I will say as a big fan of the Wii version (DOZENS OF US) I’m still fighting with the controls a little, partially because it’s been ages since I played a twin stick shooter. I’m sure I’ll have it mastered right around the time I roll credits.
I’ve been in a bit of a retro mood, so I’m currently playing Final Fantasy A2: Grimoire of the Rift. Although I am emulating it, I can definitely see how this game might have been perfect for a handheld like the DS: there’s a lot of smaller quests to grind out in your slack time and the plot is inconsequential enough* (at least so far) that you don’t have to worry about forgetting crucial details if you play it in fits and starts.My previous experience with the FFT series is the original for the PS One, so I will be using that as my baseline when discussing the mechanical changes to the formula that A2 brings (it is possible some of these changes were wrought earlier in the first Advance title or even War of the Lions, the enhanced port of the original). One of the biggest differences is in the job system. Jobs are exclusive to specific (fantasy) races and may require unlocking through quests. In addition, the skills tied to a specific job are not automatically available upon changing to the job; they must be learned from specific equipment. This has the bizarre effect where optimizing gear is not necessarily about the best stat boost, but about equipping something that will give the character a skill they haven’t yet mastered.During battle, there’s also a new gimmick called Laws. When you start each fight, your party will be given a condition from a Judge (some sort of immortal arbiter) like “No refilling MP” or “Abilities that use an Ice effect are forbidden”. Most of these are pretty easy to work around, but there are a few like “Missing [an attack] is forbidden” or “Knockback is forbidden” that are a pain (since they rely entirely on random chance). Failing the condition can lock your party from reviving fallen members or, in a few quests, can actually auto-fail the quest. As part of whatever magical contract these Judges enforce, your party is also granted a boon, like regen or a slightly higher stat through the battle.The narrative justification for this leads to another new wrinkle to gameplay: Clans. Instead of adventuring parties wandering the land causing unregulated havoc or sparring with each other constantly, they are reigned in by their adherence to the Judges and their Clan’s stats. As far as I can tells, these stats (Adaptability, Teamwork, Negotiation, Aptitude) don’t seem to do much besides serve as a minimum threshold for certain quests, though they may have some hidden effect I am unaware of. Once a year, there’s also an auction house event where the clans of the land bid over control of the regions. Control over a region means equipment and quest fees (yes, you have to pay a fee to accept a quest) will be reduced for that clan; it is also likely that any clans you beat for control will show up on the map looking for a fight.The last real important difference is in the shops. Instead of the normal RPG convention of new equipment becoming available as you reach new areas or progress the plot, here it seems mostly unlocked by a quasi-crafting system where you bring certain components to the shop, which will may a specific piece of gear available to buy. Thus far, it’s not too much bother; My party gets plenty of unique components from participating in quests, so I just check out what we can get whenever we stop at a shop. However, I can see this becoming a chore later on when I want to get a very specific piece of equipment and I must figure out how to get the right components to drop.*(In short: modern day kid is transported to a fantasy land through magic and taken in by a clan. In order to get back home, he must fill a magical grimoire with adventures and heroic deeds. In other words, he’s has to do a bunch of quests.)On the mobile front, I’m proud to say I finally beat Lady Luck in Dicey Dungeons. The bonus episodes were tough to get through, especially for the Witch, who always seems chronically underpowered. Now I just have the extra levelpacks to get through (Halloween Special and Reunion).
1) Really enjoyed reading about A2, as it’s been something I’ve flirted with booting up for a long time. I couldn’t bring myself to drop $60 on Fire Emblem, 2023’s first half is just too loaded, so I just may use this to scratch my grid tactics itch – thanks for being so in-depth2) Dicey Dungeons on mobile is insane, thank you for making me aware
I hope the amazing twist on the game’s mechanics in the witch Halloween episode make up for her bonus episode being the game’s butthole.
Powerwash Simulator is one of the few games I’ve bought this year, It’s great to see them adding new content pretty regularly
This… might actually a good answer to the question of what I’m playing this weekend. I’ve had PowerWash for almost two years and, with the main game completed, I’ve forgotten to look out for the smaller updates they’re doing, which I think so far just consists of Tomb Raider and this? Sounds like a good use of my time and my trident hose.I’ve gone hard on Gloomhaven: Jaws of the Lion over the past week and need to let my nephew catch up so we can compare notes. The deeper I go, the more I appreciate that I’m managing five decks right now: the decks of cards for each of the attacks my characters have available per mission (with more card choices added when my character levels up), the deck of cards that augment the amount of damage that gets added/multiplied/substracted with each attack (with the ability to subtract bad cards and/or add better cards through various means), and the deck of cards that augment the monsters attacks (which can have x2 or x0 modifiers shuffled in per mission via status effects).It’s a lot.And that’s kinda why it jives with me, and why it jives with my nephew. We were just talking last night about how amazing it was that a game with this much content costs $35, and a game with this much nerdy management is just hanging out on Target shelves. All my homies love Jaws of the Lion.But I had a particularly rough experience a couple nights ago where the monster deck had 9 of 28 cards that would completely negate their attack damage, and within probably 20 attacks none of them came up. At one point 10 cards were drawn, so 9 of the remaining 18 were x0 damage cards. It felt like it would be overkill with those odds, but I was just about dead, so I used a status effect that let me draw two of those modifier cards and choose the one that was more beneficial to me. And I pulled +1 and x2 damage cards.And what do you say to that? In a video game you’d say that the RNG was broken, but I’m shuffling physical cards here. It was a fluke, and one that absolutely could not be counteracted. All the effort to make a build to just flood the enemies with bad cards and coordinate my characters’ attacks to work well with one another, and the monster are just like, “Lol, I’m just gonna keep pulling critical hits.” Utterly demoralizing.So PowerWash… yeah, PowerWash sounds fun this weekend.
I thought that dude was Cobra Commander for a moment.
*yawn*Is that all…? Viscera Cleanup Detail has been creatively nailing that schtick in excess since it’s launch day in 2015.
I’ve dipped back into Dragon Quest XI after a long absence- I’m determined to finally finish the third act, even if it requires a bit of grinding to beat these “defeat this boss in X moves or less” trials which frankly seem a bit bullshit to me. To be sure some grind is sort of part of the deal, but also, I feel like this entire act could have been condensed a little.I’ve also been playing another entry in the series, Dragon Quest III, and have just gotten past that game’s first “final boss”. I actually like how this is handled, there’s this whole separate world under the first.And I can report some very important progress in Final Fantasy XIV. At long last I am done with Heavensward crafting! That was way too complicated for its own good, especially with two of the level 60 quests requiring you have near-level-cap gear and a food bonus in addition to learning the master recipes. That shit was way too involved in general, and I have reason to believe the Stormblood quests are more reasonable. Let’s hope.
Not playing much this weekend due to work, but have been working on finally completing FFXII (I’m terrible at completing RPGs nowadays). Switching back and forth between this and Elden Ring, but seeing as I have greatly enjoyed FFXII and it’s systems (and I just love the Tactics games and Ivalice in general), I just really want to get through it to experience the rest of the story. There are some mods I’d like to install for a second playthrough once I do finish it, but struggling to get any of the mods to work on my Steam Deck so gave up for the moment.
Mild spoilers ahead if you haven’t finished the main storyline…….This sort of happened in the main story, where you discover that you’re working for the bad guy. Not only can’t you turn him down, but you happily avail yourself of his facilities for larger jobs.It was a real record-scratch for me. I went from trying to help people out to turning around and working for the dude causing their issues.While fully admitting that I might have been expecting just a little *too* much story from a game about cleaning, the fact is that they did hire someone to write a story, and this bit just felt really out of place.
I wonder if it’s good enugh for Let’s Game It Out to do a video on.