PowerWash Simulator is a unique gaming experience. The game helps me relax and almost feels therapeutic in a strange way. The small snippets of lore sprinkled around during your playthrough are a bit underwhelming and generic. Maybe the makers felt the same, so they decided to add theme packs as DLC. After the Tomb Raider special pack, the Midgar Special Pack is here to bring the Final Fantasy VII world into the PowerWash phenomenon.
More lore, please!
I am somewhat on a PowerWash Simulator binge lately. I can’t quite describe what it is but the game keeps me occupied for more hours than I’d like to admit. The white noise of the pressure washer and the occasional Pavlov-reaction-inducing bell when a certain surface is 100% clean, does something with me. It’s addictive but I can’t quite grasp why I keep coming back. One thing is for sure, it’s not because of the lore of the game. There is almost no backstory to this game. This annoyed quite a bunch of players. Even to the point some started making up lore for the game. Some speculate dirt is taking over the world in the dystopian future and it’s the player’s job to restore the world to its former glory. Others have gone a much darker route and claim there are much more sinister things at play hinting at a serial killer at work. Whatever it may be, I find the small snippets of conversations you “unlock” when reaching a certain milestone in the cleaning process at hand fun but sadly too underused.
How about adding one of the greatest backstories enjoyed by so many gamers? The Midgar Special Pack does just that. It adds 5 levels putting you right at the start of the events of Final Fantasy VII. You’ll get jobs from Shinra but also from Avalanche giving you a unique insight into both sides of the conflict. The conversations you’ll have during cleaning are a thousand times more colourful as opposed to the original game. The references to the events in Midgar filled me with nostalgia. Some (non-essential but still fun) lore is added to the already complex story of Final Fantasy VII
Clean mechas are happy mechas
The Five levels in the Midgar Special Pack take you through a range of familiar places. Four jobs for Shinra, one for Tifa Lockhart. The jobs at Shinra involve cleaning some vehicles for display at an exhibition in Shinra headquarters to getting the Airbuster shiny for deployment. Not as straightforward as it seems. These bots have all sorts of attachments that need cleaning from all sorts of angles in order to get them dirt-free. There are almost no straight lines so there is a lot of precise manoeuvring needed to get through these jobs. The job at the Seventh Heaven bar was one overflowing with FFVII nostalgia. All the details are there and they even added Barret’s grappling gun and Cloud’s Buster Sword to perfectly paint the Avalanche picture.
Conclusion
The Midgar Special Pack is a must-have for fans of both franchises. It adds about 10 hours of gameplay to the game but more importantly… It adds decent lore to PowerWash Simulator making it more interesting and rewarding to play.
