Gaming: Car Mechanic Simulator is a thing

We may be wrong, but our understanding of videogames is that you play them as a way to forget the crushing mundanity of your nine-to-five job. You don't play them as a way to do a second, pretend job that you don't get paid for.

Try telling that to the guys behind the recently announced Car Mechanic Simulator 2015, though, which will be arriving on PCs on June 19.

In what appears to be an authentic recreation of the thrilling 2015 season of 'being a car mechanic', the game promises "an infinite number of randomly generated missions", which is presumably how real-life Kwik Fit employees see the week stretching out ahead of them.

Each of the game's 16 fictional cars is constructed from more than 200 bits, any number of which could require replacement or tuning during a given job. What's not clear yet is whether the game also simulates the abject horror of putting the entire thing back together and having one really quite important looking bolt left over.

The entire thing plays out in a first-person perspective, meaning you're actually wandering around the workshop getting your imaginary hands dirty rather than just flicking through a series of menus. Think Call of Duty, except you're dismantling engines rather than terrorist faces.

And when you're finally done tinkering, you can even test the results on the dyno to check that the entire thing doesn't shake itself apart like a clown car above 50mph.

Car Mechanic Simulator 2015 might be baffling, but you can't argue it isn't comprehensive. The only thing missing is a dedicated button on the keyboard that allows you to suck air in through your teeth and say 'it's gonna cost you' before sipping apologetically from a fatally strong mug of tea...