Surely you have already chosen PowerWash Simulator. It has been around for a few years, winning hearts with its simple, yet compelling gameplay. Yes, it’s about spraying water at filthy buildings and objects. Yes, it’s repetitive and slow. You could hose down a patio with a power washer in real life. The only thing that counters all of those arguments is the fact that this is a video game, and once you clean something, it goes “ding”.

Cleaning a layer of muck, revealing the true colours of whatever you’re cleaning, is satisfying enough. The career mode is surprisingly long, and you earn cash by washing all kinds of vehicles, structures, and more. The stages are quite large and feature increasingly complex objects, so it’s easy to stay engaged for hours. We found ourselves eager to keep playing, despite the long levels and repetitive tasks.

With bonus jobs, free play, and challenge modes, online co-op is available. As you progress in your career, you can purchase power washers, extensions, nozzles, and soap to use in all these modes, so there’s a lot to experiment with.

There are many useful features on this controller, but we had a hard time figuring them all out, and tutorials are so short that some features barely register. It’s a shame that DualSense’s capabilities are wholly ignored; this seems like the ideal game for all its tricks. Despite any reservations, the game is still engaging, relaxing, and enjoyable.

Pros:

• Relaxing gameplay.

• Challenges and levels.

• Variety of modes.

• Online co-op.

Cons:

• Controls are fiddly.

• Kinda boring.

• Soap adds little.

• DualSense not used.

• No music.

Score is 7/10