PowerWash Simulator: Wallace & Gromit Review (Xbox Series X|S, PlayStation 5, Switch & PC)

I’d like to say that I spent my morning with a pair of knuckledusters and a demonic forge in the underbelly of a rock solid first-person shooter, but I didn’t. To be perfectly honest, I spent it elsewhere—in the cheddar cheese-coated quarters of a familiar British suburb. I spent those early hours, not brandishing a firearm or anything remotely sinister, but essentially dusting off the nozzle of an old hose and chucking gallons of icy water onto brick, asphalt, and cheese. And if you’ve yet to put two and two together yet — yes, I am talking about Wallace & Gromit; specifically, the PowerWash Simulator: Wallace & Gromit Special Pack. Yes, it does exist, as does the Shrek Special Pack, funnily enough. The point is, PowerWash Simulator isn’t really a stranger to collaborating with universally beloved animations — so, in reality, this doesn’t come as too much of a surprise.

Wallace & Gromit isn’t so much of a new game as it is a little extra material for fledgling cleaners to prod at with a hose and bucket handle. The DLC, which basically creates a similar setting as the previous add-ons in the PowerWash Simulator series, invites you to embark on a series of cleaning sprees—grubby bouts of intense but satisfying scrubbing missions that primarily involve operating in recognizable locations across the Wallace & Gromit universe. Think Shrek, and how it spouted a swamp mission, and replace said swamp with a claymation suburb — and you’ll have a rough idea of what I’m getting at. This is, in short, how the latest DLC establishes its foundation: by tapping into the existing world of a timeless franchise and using several of its iconic locales to create scrubbable counterparts for returning users to tackle. The question is, is it worth the hassle of buying?

“It’s Cheese, Gromit!”

If you’re relatively familiar with the Wallace & Gromit world, then you’ll know that, if you remove the cheese from the mix, it more or less revolves around a pretty stereotypical British suburban town. Well, in an effort to capture the essence and timeless spirit of this town and its surroundings, PowerWash Simulator comes clean with a hearty selection of explorable missions—familiar settings that range from old Victorian-style streets to “cheesy celestial bodies” and beyond. In a nutshell, the game is still the same as it was before, but with the inclusion of several new landmarks to explore, forms of grit to abolish, and a network of cheesy nozzles to bolt onto your existing tools, it is a game with a few additional bells and whistles. In other words, it’s a hundred percent PowerWash Simulator — but with cheese instead of splurges of oil and mud.

First and foremost, there are the levels—the beating hearts of any DLC. Thankfully, Wallace & Gromit has a substantial amount of layers to shovel through, with levels that can easily rob you of dozens of hours of work. Granted, this isn’t particularly surprising, given the fact that most, if not all of the extensions under the PowerWash Simulator umbrella are of equal length and density. But there’s something different about this one; it’s the fact that, despite being almost identical to its predecessors in terms of its gameplay style, it brings a great amount of complexity to the emulsion of the original. Sure enough, it’s Wallace & Gromit, so it isn’t as graphically superior as you would imagine, but that isn’t to say that it’s without its own merits or striking visual effects. Perhaps I’m being biased, what with Wallace & Gromit being close to home, but truthfully, the DLC looks great.

More Cheese For Your Buck

The general gameplay loop isn’t dramatically different from other versions of the game. Like before, you spend your hours gradually carving away at one of many, many layers on the map, and using a variation of nozzles to remove dirt from the surface. Naturally, Wallace & Gromit doesn’t do anything to spoil this formula, in the case that, it doesn’t add anything special to the mix, but instead relies on its compounds to provide a familiar yet unquestionably favorable experience. Sure enough, its areas are different, but mechanically speaking, it isn’t so much of an experimental thing as it is a love letter to an existing blueprint. But that’s fine, because as the saying goes, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. And let’s be honest here, time has shown that PowerWash Simulator is more than capable of maintaining an audience without having to resort to outsourcing additional materials.

With all of the above said, it is worth pointing out that Wallace & Gromit does have a couple of extra nifty features to chomp through. Aside from the bundle of thematic maps that it brings to the table (Wallaby Street included), the DLC does also include a new contraption for you to use, which is the WASH LAD—a cleaning tool that essentially serves as the tongue-in-cheek ode to Wallace’s natural fixation on unusual mechanical doodads and doohickeys. The only major difference between the WASH LAD and the other gadgets in the unorthodox inventor’s toolkit, however, is that the former works, as does it perform miracles on the Wensleydale-written crags and crevices of the suburban world. So that’s a major plus, given the questionable history of the titular hero’s shoddy and often dangerous contraptions.

Verdict

It almost sounds like a cop-out at this point, but the fact is, if you did enjoy just about any of the other DLC in PowerWash Simulator, then you’re probably going to enjoy plucking the dirt from this claymation gig. It isn’t massively different from its kin, so don’t expect to subject yourself to a lot more than you’ve already experienced in earlier iterations. With that said, if you’re hunkering for a break away from the usual spots on the map, and wouldn’t mind swapping out the usual oil-slicked skid marks for a bit of cheesy fun, then you might as well throw caution to the wind and join up with the Were-Rabbit and the famed inventor for another tour of the power washing archipelago.