Road Maintenance Simulator 2

Written by Jason Dailey on 12/23/2024 for PS5  

In the award-winning 1994 film Forrest Gump, the titular character shares a story with a stranger about how his mother compared life to a box of chocolates – “You never know what you’re gonna get”, according to Ms. Gump. That same analogy can be applied to video game simulators – you simply never know what you’re going to get in terms of quality. Thankfully, Road Maintenance Simulator 2 is one of the good ones in life’s box of simulator chocolates, not one of those nasty ones with a weird filling that you can’t even describe the taste of.

Simulators can be especially hit-or-miss, and I find that the biggest hurdle a lot of simulators have is getting the game to run and perform consistently well. Truthfully, I was somewhat shocked to find that Road Maintenance Simulator 2 (RMS2) runs great most of the time on PlayStation 5. The framerate is stable, cars aren’t flying off the map (or falling through it), and everything generally works as it’s supposed to. With that said, there are a few minor things that could use a bit of refinement. At times there is a weird graphical “noise”, usually around the maintenance depot, that looks like static on an old television. There are also sporadic asset streaming issues related to draw distance, but to be fair, I am really nitpicking with that one considering what type of game RMS2 is. Oh, and sometimes it rains inside of vehicles, which is kind of amusing. But my big takeaway is that RMS2 is the best-performing simulator that I’ve ever played at launch. I would even say it’s rare to get one this polished out of the gate.

It's less rare, though certainly not a given, that simulators have a gameplay loop as engaging as RMS2’s. Road maintenance tasks are divided up by the four weather seasons, with each having varied tasks. You’ll be patching potholes and building roads in the Summer, and then plowing snow in the Winter, for example. A handy-dandy tablet is where you will view and select tasks, view the game map, track progress through the seasons, and access the game’s soundtrack. There are dozens of tasks to complete, from cleaning up a rest area along the highway, to building an entire section of road, and I always looked forward to seeing how the next task played out. In that regard, the game has excellent pacing, with new equipment and mechanics introduced alongside each new task and season. It had me hooked – I could see additional pieces of equipment just sitting in the maintenance depot that I hadn’t got to use yet, and I couldn’t wait to get my hands on them.

Speaking of hands-on, every task in RMS2 needs your input to some extent, and I found it to be one of the more “involved” simulators, if you will. For example, to fill a pothole, you need to load up a bucket of cold mix, a jackhammer, and a tamp. Each one must be grabbed and loaded individually, used for the job, and then unloaded and put back in its place at the depot. The same is true while on the job site, with each step of the process needing your input. Start the engine of the equipment, disengage the parking brake, move into position, turn on your lights, engage the machinery tools, and then do it all in reverse once the task is done. This process is typical of every job, albeit sometimes with heavy machinery rather than hand tools, and can be done in either a first or third-person view. I loved how tactile every job was, making me feel like I was actually doing the task myself. After all, we play simulators for the simulation, do we not?

I do have a couple of minor gripes with the gameplay, however. For starters, some objective and interactable objects could be highlighted better. Each task will be displayed on screen and highlighted in orange in the environment, but until I got my bearings there were times when I was running in circles around the depot looking for where I was supposed to be. The game would tell me to get in a piece of machinery, but it would only highlight the tiny garage door power button of where the equipment was rather than the equipment itself. Eventually I knew what to expect, but that first hour was touch and go. Along those lines, at one point I thought I encountered a game-breaking bug, because I was unable to place traffic signs into their base. With a bit of help from the RMS2 public relations team, I learned that I needed to place two sign bases – not one – which is why it would not let me place my traffic sign. The game never explicitly told me that, though I did find it curious that I had four bases for two signs in my truck – so let’s call it offsetting penalties on both me and the dev team, but it could still use some tweaking. And finally, in the gripe category, there are some tasks that take entirely too long to complete. Dirt removal during road construction immediately comes to mind, which took me so long that I ran out of fuel in the wheel loader and could not finish the job without loading everything back up to return to base for a refuel. The whole process took me nearly two hours to complete. And that was for just one part of building a road. I want to be clear though – my issues with RMS2 are relatively minor compared to the enjoyment I’ve had playing the game.

I also wanted to mention the game’s “original” soundtrack. I write “original” in quotations because I have a reasonable suspicion that the soundtrack is entirely AI-generated. For some gamers, I know that is a massive turn-off, but it didn’t bother me with RMS2, because I can almost guarantee you that without it, the team at Caipirinha Games was not going to go out and spend money paying licensing fees or hiring composers, singers, and the lot. In other words, adding a soundtrack to a super-niche simulator might be the perfect use-case for AI in video games – adding value where value otherwise would not have existed. I’m speculating of course, but my evidence includes the fact that some tracks contain absolute gibberish lyrics, they can’t be identified on music-identification apps, and each one is precisely two minutes and eleven seconds long. It’s an oddity, at the very least, but I must say that some of the songs are quite catchy.

At the end of a long, hard day of virtual road maintenance, I just wanted to start another long, hard day of virtual road maintenance. In short, Road Maintenance Simulator 2 has become one of my favorite simulators on PS5, thanks to its perfect blend of precision and peacefulness. I love how involved each of its tasks are, while rarely crossing that magic line into tedium. Honestly, it surprised me, because you never truly know which simulators are going to hit, but Road Maintenance Simulator 2 does indeed hit – like a jackhammer on asphalt. Now, if you’ll excuse me, these roads aren’t going to fix their selves, and there’s a platinum trophy calling my name.