Parents' Guide to Job Simulator

If you don't like the idea of real world work, this virtual version of it probably won't change your mind. After the novelty of being able to precisely interact with virtual versions of everyday objects wears off, all Job Simulator really leaves players with is a series of mundane tasks most people would rather avoid outside of a video game. And if you go to the trouble of, say, making yourself a smoothie in your real-world kitchen, at least you get the reward of tasting and drinking it (or getting paid for making it, if it's for your job). In the game, all you get is confirmation that you did what the game told you to do.

That said, kids who've yet to fill an eight-hour shift in a common job might get a kick out of it. They might not grow bored of going through the motions of basic chores as quickly as adults. Plus, they may find more humor in the robots' skewed perception of how humans lived and worked in the early 20th century (you can do a remarkably bad job of most tasks and still pass them). Indeed, much of the game's fun is supposed to come from simply experimenting with what you can and can't do with everything in reach around you while seeing what the robots will accept as a properly completed task. In the end, though, Job Simulator is another case of an early VR game that -- while a bit amazing in terms of what it lets you do and how it lets you do it -- doesn't really feel like much of a game at all.