There must be a substantial subculture of truck and large vehicle enthusiasts out there, It’s the only reason that I can think of why Excalibur has developed such a large catalogue of simulators. Presumably each one makes enough money to warrant another and so here we have yet another vehicle simulator.

It would be easy to find Street Cleaning Simulator risible, but then that would only be a reflection of my own gaming prejudices; it’s a bit difficult to swap from Wipeout HD to this without feeling a little bit of culture shock.

The game has Excalibur’s usual good level of detail, both in the environment and in the vehicles themselves. The use of the 3D cab view works particularly well as you trundle through the city, admittedly at a snail’s pace, cleaning roads and making a bit of money so you can improve your fleet.

There has been some effort to try and make the experience as real as possible, though I didn’t find the controls intuitive to use, which considering that this sim is recommended for ages three and up might be a bit of a problem. This aim at realism also meant that even the tutorial took a bit of time to master.

Driving around, cleaning up other peoples rubbish, does have a Zen like quality as everything seems to be happening in slow motion, I just kept itching to put the pedal to the metal, but even if you do you’re not going to get an appreciable speed out of you little beast.

Of course the name of the game is resource management as you progress through the games fourteen levels, trying to earn an honest crust whilst not killing pedestrians or fouling the traffic. The game does have an unusual custom zoom camera to examine the detritus though I’m not really sure who would want to do this.

So, it is what it is, a street cleaning sim, which may or may not get you salivating, which makes the sim difficult to mark. For an enthusiast the attention to detail will delight, but casual gamers might just remain a little confused as to just what the game play elements are and whether this could be considered fun.

6

Charles Packer