Job Simulator (PS4)

As virtual reality begins to find its footing as a legitimate way to experience a video game rather than the hokey gimmickry it once was, it still has a few hurdles to overcome, that being the early period where people need to feel out how to develop in a space where the player can view and interact with a world that exists all around them. This has lead to some of the early VR titles essentially being toy boxes, and Job Simulator feels like an excellent example of that style of game.

 

Job Simulator, sometimes subtitled “The 2050 Archives”, plays off the rising popularity of simulator-type games to make a comical scenario where robots have become so efficient they have entirely supplanted humanity and wish to experience the banal professions of human beings by way of an interactive museum. The player is asked to select one of four jobs to participate in, those being Office Worker, Store Clerk, Auto Mechanic, and Gourmet Chef, although it’s clear immediately that the floating computer monitors running the museum only have a vague idea of what human jobs were actually like. Jobs are reduced to humorous caricatures of themselves, like the office worker’s job being hitting two large buttons on their keyboard with no rhyme or reason to do paperwork, or how the gourmet chef can use absurd ingredients or burn food as long as they technically meet the classification of the order they’ve received. While it may sound bland to stand behind a convenience store counter and ring up customers, the goofy filter through which the robots perceived humanity’s actions ensures each task comes with some silly twist. One particular highlight is a radio station in the auto mechanic job where two radio hosts try to talk about cars but clearly have no knowledge of them, leading to them just spouting parts of cars linked by transitional phrases to make it sound like they’re actually making points about them. Admittedly, sometimes the game comes on a little thick with the “robots don’t understand humans” angle, particularly when it keeps repeating the same jokes about human jobs in a short span, but for the most part, it is a delightfully odd situation to give some personality to what does feel like a virtual toy box.

Each of the four jobs do have a tiny story mode of sorts, the game giving you a sequence of tasks that tie to your current job. However, almost every task is essentially a set of instructions to follow, and while they usually have a little wiggle room so you can get silly with your solution, you still have to complete the exact task and the characters very rarely seem to react to any obtuse solution. You can remove all the parts of a person’s car after they just wanted their tires to be replaced, replace those tires with donuts, and they drive off as if nothing was unusual about your work. Your interaction with the world is a bit constrained as well by necessity, the game sticking you in a confined spot you can’t venture far from in each job. Behind the counter of the convenience store, the work cubicle, the small kitchen, and the workspace of the auto shop are all equal in size and you mostly just spin around in it, using the PlayStation Move controllers to grab whatever objects are available to work with. There’s stuff to pick up, buttons to press, levers to pull, but not very many interactions are complicated. Every workspace essentially has one quirky tool that is rather open-ended for experimentation, like the copier in the office, the jumbo machine in the store, the hood ornament maker in the garage, and the soup pot in the kitchen. Seeing what goofy item you can double in size or what weird object you can slap on someone’s car as a hood ornament doesn’t require a mission structure to make it enjoyable, but the fact the missions don’t support them means you have to make your own fun with them.

 

For what’s on hand to mess around with, the Office Worker certainly feels the most lacking profession. Constrained in a cubicle, you really do feel more like you’re doing a job here than the other ones, made to interact with a fairly bland computer menu at a few points and not having much else to do in the small space besides see how many duplicate items you can make with the copier. The tasks aren’t too inspired either, leaving very little room for experimentation or silly solutions here, but things get better in the other jobs. Store Clerk’s work area has a bit more variety, especially thanks to dials you can turn to change what occupies a specific area. An energy drink company asks you to make a display that you can make as goofy as you like, your store gets robbed at banana-point, and other tasks help keep it from trending too close to the boring reality of the job.

You will always have jobs that require one expected solution and won’t settle for less, but Store Clerk feels like it opens up a bit more and Auto Mechanic takes it further as it puts you in charge of the full customization of a person’s vehicle. They have specific requests of course, but your tool sets include kooky items like flower pots that can be slotted in as engines or weird fluids you can pour in the gas tank. You can paint every car and replace all its parts to make it look goofy or ugly for a bit of fun, playing into that toy box nature as you play the game more for your own personal amusement than any reward. Gourmet Chef is the best at this though, the kitchen proving to be the perfect playground for unusual interactivity. A blender that grinds up most anything you can put in it to make gross slurries, a pot that can make soup cans out of most any ingredient, a microwave that literally nukes food and a stove perfect for burning things up… the kitchen really feels like Job Simulator’s best toy box area, and its missions aren’t bad either for trying to encourage some creativity. It’s a shame that you can make a sandwich that is just a tower of uncut fruits vaguely sandwiched between bread and not get a reaction from the game, but it won’t penalize you for it either. You can even pick up the food and eat it, vomiting if the food’s gone bad for a bit more absurdity in your pretend kitchen.

 

Each area has about the same amount of regular missions to go through, usually giving you a small tour of all you can do in that space, but besides the aforementioned specialty objects that have more than one basic possibility, you’ve seen what Job Simulator has to offer at that point. There are a few things to add longevity after the four jobs, one being what the game calls Infinite Overtime where it cooks up an endless stream of random tasks for you to do as one of the professions, and this is definitely the sort of “mess around” mode where you can just enjoy every object that you can interact with in an area. To make things a bit more interesting on a second go though, you unlock some mods for the jobs that can make the items bouncy or set things in a low gravity atmosphere, and while office worker definitely feels the plainest usually, having a bunch of objects drifting around the air helps make it fit the game’s silly tone a bit better. This does mean that you can find yourself unable to complete a mission though, as I found out in Store Clerk where someone wanted change and all the coins were floating too high out of my reach. Infinite Overtime and the mods do help Job Simulator stay fresh a little longer than its parts would be able to support otherwise, but for the most part, it remains a guided tour of a VR toy box where a lot of your enjoyment will be tied to how much you can enjoy breaking away from your goals to fiddle with the small array of objects placed around you.

THE VERDICT: Job Simulator’s goofy tone and funny misinterpretations of workplace activity make sure the game doesn’t feel like a job, even though it is essentially giving you a series of tasks it wants you complete a certain way. There is definitely room to mess around with the many objects that fill the four workplaces, but the interactivity of the game world is minimal and you mostly have to do what the game actually asks of you. It’s still a game filled with laughs and absurdity to be sure, but it typifies the idea of a virtual reality toy box. The developers have set up a few situations with a select amount of things to play with and, outside the guided tour that is the mission mode, just let you play with them until you grow tired of it. The canvas for your creativity is somewhat limited, but each profession has just enough in it that the ride is fine until you’ve exhausted the small supply of activities.

 

And so, I give Job Simulator for the PlayStation 4…

An OKAY rating. Were Job Simulator simply more a reactive game it could have got by on its current elements, but being left to take delight in your own ridiculousness only lasts so long. Despite its creative setting helping to make real life jobs more enjoyable in game form, you’re not really pushing against anything when you are asked to complete them. Acknowledging the player’s quirkiness or unique problem-solving in some manner or even giving more complex object functions to experiment with would help Job Simulator feel like it’s more than just a virtual toy box.

 

A more meaningful level of interactivity would make this more than a way to fool around in VR, but as a way to fool around in VR, it isn’t half-bad. Kids will have a blast with its unusual nature and adults can appreciate the twists on workplace life, but your enjoyment will likely come from just how much you can devote yourself to the idea of just playing around with what’s put before you, and Job Simulator needed better offerings in that department to at least make it a toy box worthy of digging into again and again.