Touch Mechanic Hands-On

The Nintendo DS is the prime place for people who normally don't like to get their hands dirty to get some quality time in the kitchen, operating room, and now, under the hood of the car with Touch Mechanic. This car mechanic simulation game puts you charge of handling oil-slicked wheels and lug nuts, allowing you to customize your own car in order to compete in shows and fix hunks of junk until they're presentable. Publisher Aspyr Media came by our office to give us a quick demo of what Touch Mechanic is all about.

As a young aspiring car mechanic, your goal is to eventually tune cars for one of the world's top racing teams. To get there, you need to start from the very bottom--of Bob's garage. Through the game's 75 episodes, you'll learn how to swap air filters, change fenders, put in a new exhaust, and spray paint the car, among other things. You'll primarily be doing the maintaining and Bob will provide the guidance, but your job will get more difficult once you're left to fend for yourself because you'll need to remember all the steps on your own. So far, Touch Mechanic seems to strike a good balance between overly hectic simulation and repetitive chores.

In our short demo we were able to take a wheel off by removing the lug nuts individually. Using the touch screen, you can select the tool you need, and with the appropriate squiggly action, you can remove the lug nuts with ease. After that, we went through the fender replacement tutorial in which we had to first sand the area with our stylus, then use the saw to cut along dotted lines. A meter at the top of the screen indicates how fast you can saw before you break the blade. It's important to be swift, but you also have to balance out your actions so that you don't break anything. Once we were done, we had to take off the old fender and drag and drop the new one to take its place. Then we had to weld the piece into place so that we could finally spray some paint over it, which was the best part because we didn't have to stay between any lines.

Similar to Trauma Center, time is important and if you make too many mistakes, you will fail the task at hand. You also start off with a certain number of credits, which will slowly tick down as you do your handiwork. It's in your best interest to complete the job as quickly as possible in order to maximize profits. You'll need all the cash you can get to progress through the game by fixing up your own car to compete in custom shows. Unlike the surgical simulation where it's life or death, the pace of Touch Mechanic is much slower--and no one dies if you fail. If you didn't perform as well as you would have liked, you can always revisit challenges to charge up that bank account.

There are four generic car models to choose from and decorate: classic car, race car, SUV, and coupe. You can customize your baby with body kits, new rims, and a new coat of paint. Decals are also available if you really want to spice things up, and the cars are in 3D, so you can get a good look all around and admire your hard work (and hard-earned cash). The visuals look good from what we've seen, with the static portraits of the characters that appear in the top screen and your workshop at the bottom. You definitely get the auto shop vibe after seeing the mess in Bob's garage.

Touch Mechanic combines the addictive and accessible gameplay of other simulation games and puts it in a setting that can appeal to a wide range of people. You don't have to be a car aficionado to have some fun tinkering away in a greased-up hole-in-the-wall auto shop. Have that wrench ready when Touch Mechanic ships in March 2009.