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Garbage Truck Simulator 2011 review

Our Verdict

Dull and clinical, this terrible simulator lives up to its name.

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There are several glaring inaccuracies in this sim. You're unable, for instance, to smash my gate up. Or leave everyone's wheelie bins strewn all over my street as if you think that's an acceptable way to do your job.

No, you play a sort of bin-obsessed poltergeist, flitting between the bodies of both bin lorry driver and bin man in an attempt to command the most successful rubbish disposal company in a city devoid of other rubbish disposal companies. You do this by driving your lorry through sparsely populated, smearily textured urban environments in search of your bread and butter (that'll be bins), making sure to obey local laws: stop at red lights, don't speed and don't mangle pedestrians underneath your filthy wheel arches.

Upon arrival at bins, you assume control of your perambulatory colleague. That's when the real excitement begins, as you take each bin (both wheelie and bag are represented) and slowly, tediously empty their contents into your lorry.

It's a clinical and frankly naive overview of municipal waste management. One in which nappies never fly out of binbags and smear down your shins, and Co-op bags with small amounts mysterious liquids collected in the bottom never leak down the back of your neck. It looks and plays like an otherworldly, 3D animated concept pitch, something Suffolk council might create to sell the idea of waste management to a planet of mucky, indifferent idiots.

It's a sim as unappealing as its title, and impossible to enjoy even in that ironic manner you can often get away with in games like these.

The Verdict
Garbage Truck Simulator 2011 review

Dull and clinical, this terrible simulator lives up to its name.