How many times have you thought about building the PC of your dreams, with the most advanced components on the market and capable of running any video game at maximum resolution? Well, now close your eyes and imagine having an infinite budget, with which you can buy the most advanced and expensive pieces on the market. Open them again and you will find PC Building Simulator 2 before your eyes. The 2018 title won the hearts of thousands of gamers, and is now back with a version even more realistic, more complete and longer.
In fact, PC Building Simulator 2 will appear exclusively on the Epic Games Store on October 12, 2022, allowing you to simulate in a (quite) realistic way the assembly of a computer from top to bottom thanks to over 1200 different components from 45 brands, including MSI, Gigabyte and ASUS. The two main modes of the first title, the free mode and the career, return in the sequel, which makes the protagonist suffer a fate very similar to the previous one.
In fact, in the original chapter, the protagonist's uncle, "Uncle Tim", owner of "Tim's RED HOT Repairs", had decided to go abroad, leaving the shop in the hands of the player, who found himself without money, without components to use and with a clientele that was nothing short of dissatisfied with the way their computers had been treated. When you start the PC Building Simulator 2 career for the first time you will find a note from your dear uncle, informing you that the previous workshop has mysteriously burned down and he is - again - out of business, putting you in charge of the 'activities.
Another shop, same story
Aside from the change of scenery, PC Building Simulator 2's career mode has the same structure as that of the first: every day you will receive customer requests via email complete with funny texts that are worth reading for a laugh; it will be up to you to choose whether to accept them or not, and if so, their computer will arrive directly in the shop. All you have to do is pick it up and bring it to the work table, which has now taken on multiple functions.
In fact, in the new game you will not only be able to fix and create PCs from scratch, but you will have the possibility, by changing the look of the work table, to completely characterize the case using spray paints and to decide at your convenience how to manage the liquid cooling of the computer . This last feature was already present in the original title, but has now been improved and made more complete, giving you total freedom in creating a customized cycle. Do you want a single block for the motherboard or a block for the CPU? You can. Do you want to put cables of any color, matte or shiny? You can.
The personalization of the PC is instead more limited: you will have spray paints of any color, with which you can paint every part of the case (deciding whether to avoid the transparent areas or not). It would have been nice to be able to insert text, logos or stickers as well, but these options could be added with future updates, so this is a great starting point.
More organised, but too good
Another interesting addition to the first chapter, which points out the developers' attention to detail, is a tablet available to the player during the career. So you no longer have to go back and forth between your workstation and your office computer to check the status of shipments and requests, just pick up your tablet and you'll have everything under control. Furthermore, thanks to the device you can customize your shop, changing the music and the furnishings simply by framing a part of the room and choosing the style you like best.
Spiral House has also resolved the confusion that was generated in the first title when, with a large number of requests, one lost count of the components to be ordered and ended up with the customer's PC but without the right pieces to be able to fix it. In fact, in the PC Building Simulator 2 shop there is a tracking system, thanks to which you will have to assign the items in the cart to an order, allowing you to always keep everything under control.
One of the few flaws of PC Building Simulator 2 is that career runs too smoothly. As much as I tried to sabotage the orders, applying way too much thermal paste, deliberately forgetting to insert parts or wrong positioning of the GPU and RAM, no customers complained, no one decided to pay me less or break my glass of the shop. Although it is a simulation game, errors should be contemplated, penalizing the player and teaching him how to improve.
The fine line between simulation and education
What PC Building Simulator 2 isn't clear about is its direction: the line between being merely a simulation game and being educational is very thin, and Spiral House he doesn't seem to have clear the identity he wants to give to the work; Throughout your career there are moments of instruction via messages that appear the first time you discover features, but many opportunities are missed. The player is given the skeleton of how to build a PC, but no comprehensive step-by-step tutorial is provided to make him proficient even in real life, nor any tips on how to fix common mistakes in building.
A DLC with an in-depth tutorial mode would therefore make the game much more complete, making it accessible not only to PC building enthusiasts who can currently enjoy building the machine of their dreams, but also to complete beginners who would like to be able to do it in real life but they don't have the skills.
The Free Build mode is indisputably a hoot, and the catalog of over a thousand pieces will guarantee you to build not only the PC of your dreams, but any PC you can think of, testing it, benchmarking it and overclocking it. There simulation is realistic, but aimed at making your life easier: you won't have to worry about cable management, just click the cables and they will fix themselves; the RAM? Put it wherever you want, any slot will do.
