PowerWash Simulator’s Warhammer 40,000 DLC Review: Narrowly Passed Its Skill Check (PC)

Embark on a cleansing crusade against the tyranny of dirt and filth thwarting the glorious arsenal in PowerWash Simulator’s newest DLC: Warhammer 40,000. As the Tech Priest, your duty is to perform rituals of purification on a variety of different machinery belonging to the Adeptus Mechanicus. Unlock the five new washing challenges for players centered around the armory and vehicles popular to the tabletop RPG. From the Ultramarines Land Raider to the House Harkshroud Imperial Knight, the DLC allows you to get up and close with some of the most detailed armors present in Warhammer. The Astra Militarum Rogal Dorn Tank even had items latched along its body, which does require a bit of a more patient hand, but it was still one of my favorite parts of the DLC. 

Personally, I enjoy cleaning locations rather than vehicles in the standard PowerWash Simulator game because it allows players to learn more about the background of the DLCs that have been added in. Having more areas to clean and “unlock” within the game would reflect similarities to how the DLC for Tomb Raider utilized this feature. But for what we didn’t get in locations, we did get in the game’s finer details when it came to the Tank’s equipment, the intricate pipes, cogs, and whistles on the Imperial Knight and the Dreadnought, not to mention the massive scale that some of these machines have. To get a better sense of what the DLC has to offer, dive in with me to look into all of the features the Warhammer 40,000 addition covers in PowerWash Simulator. 

Praise the Omnissiah. 

PowerWash Simulator and DLCs like Warhammer 40,000 are available on Steam, Xbox One & Series X/S, Nintendo Switch, and PlayStation 4/5. Each DLC costs $7.99 with the main game costing $24.99 across all platforms.

Story – Warhammer’s Shortest Campaign

PowerWash Simulator is a bit of a funny game when it comes to telling stories within their narrative–for someone like me who downloaded it for the cleaning, I didn’t even realize the conspiracy going on with the town’s antics until much later in the game. In Warhammer, you are the Tech-Priest, a somewhat undervalued colleague whose task is to sanctify the once well-tempered machines and bring them back to good standing by scrubbing them down real good. It’s a simulator game so there’s not too much action happening and not a whole lot of story to deep dive into like the base of the PowerWash’s original story. 

Within the DLCs, FuturLab always implements common themes with each respective franchise. So whereas, you had interactions with Laura Croft in the Tomb Raider DLC leading you through puzzles and secret areas, you get notifications from your higher-ups in the Adeptus Mechanicus checking in on your progress for the cleansing ritual. It’s a lot less involved and more just a moment to take a breather from washing and read the notifications. All of these interactions are completely one-sided through only texts, but it does add some interesting dialogue and some neat little Easter eggs. 

Clever Snarky Redactions in PW’s Warhammer 40K DLC

As involved as Tomb Raider was, I didn’t get that as much in Warhammer since the game is so large and covers only a small part of the factions within it. There are also many redacted sections in the messages which always took me a bit out of the game wondering if they were spoilers or if the game couldn’t cover certain topics pertaining to their rating. Some of these came off as hilarious, because the game used these redactions to censor cursing, and yet illuminated players by adding hints about what possibly could have been said. It was humorous, and quite intelligent since you could still get a gist of what was trying to be said, and I always appreciate a bit of dry sarcastic humor within my games. 

Gameplay – Same Great Premise With Not Enough Content

Aside from the usual flashbangs of light that come from trying to find where the dirt is and accidentally hitting that key when you’re still in the beginning stages, PowerWash Simulator still upholds the peaceful and nonsensical nature of just tuning out and cleaning. You don’t need to think too hard, and you don’t need to try too hard until that last moment when you’re wondering where the last spec of dirt is. There’s a lot of attention to detail when it comes to the machinery involved and something that scratches the brain so nicely when you’re cleaning all the individual tools on the Tank. While this may result in pipes, cargo bags, and cockpit ports getting easily overlooked, I never found it to be much of an issue since I always use the Status bar in the upper-left-hand corner to let me know when a section is clear before I move on. 

Now, there have been a couple of complaints surrounding the exclusion of the triple-nozzle in previous PowerWash Simulator DLCs and the same holds true for Warhammer. This tool was included to produce a powerful pressure while covering more area depending on how you used it. This isn’t so much an issue because you aren’t dealing with hard gunk buildup that doesn’t want to come off, unlike the Temple in the standard base of the game. Most of the grime comes off with just the powerwash tool provided to you and I don’t even use soap or additional cleaners (because I forget they are there). So while the job would certainly go a lot faster if you did that, I don’t think that it detracts from the experience of the game. 

Dark Angels Deathwing Redemptor Dreadnought in PW’s Warhammer 40K DLC

What may detract for some people is that there are a couple of bugs, one of which I encountered. At some point during a wash, the stepladder, ladder, and scaffolding fully stopped working. They wouldn’t move or allow me to pick them up so they were set in their fixed position. Luckily, this didn’t happen on any major challenge like the Knight because that would have been very inconvenient.

Fascinating enough, you do get a special skin for the duration of this DLC, you are equipped with robes and are protected in this armor giving you a human/cyborg-machine kind of feel. You also get a new powerwash tool called the MKII Aqua-Santica Arquebus that is so SteamPunk, I adore it. I don’t think you can equip these skins outside of their DLCs, which is a tad disappointing but it’s not as if you often see yourself when cleaning in PowerWash. A nice touch for Warhammer in particular would be if you could see the robe moving around you. The heavy coat does have some physics when you watch the playback of your cleaning session–this isn’t so much of a nitpick as it is something I would have liked to see.

Overall, although the game does include the same amount of maps as the other DLCs with the Back to the Future DLC having five and the SpongeBob DLC having six, it doesn’t feel like a lot of content. The Warhammer map is very detailed and impressive, and the vehicles/armor were incredibly fun to unveil and polish. But without a location or building to take up a few hours of your time, the DLC feels a bit lacking and doesn’t provide nearly as much of a challenge as the Mermalair or the Hill Valley Clocktower. I would have liked for the space we get to require some cleaning itself, even if it was only in the side areas. 

Audio & Graphics – Alexa, Play Pink Noise By PowerWash

PowerWash Simulator doesn’t add in a lot of soundtracks aside from the audio cues and the dull sound of different powerwash strengths so there’s not a lot to look forward to in terms of stellar OSTs to buy on the side. There’s really not a lot of music to look forward to that would give players a vibe that you are in a fantasy sci-fi setting surrounded by heavy mechs prepared to go to war. The biggest sound you get is from the powerwasher itself which is often a dull background noise as you clean in the game with occasional pings, letting you know that you have finished section by section of the challenge. 

Looking at the Warhammer DLC from a more graphics and world-building design standpoint, this game nails it. The visuals are stunningly sick, appearing very Borderlands where the planet outside looks almost comical but still incredibly artistic. Roaming around the garage space took up about five seconds of each playback session after you’re done cleaning because I enjoyed exploring the space. 

As mentioned before, I think it would have been nice to have cleaned up portions of the garage in order to unlock those areas. Eventually, as you cleaned them, the vehicles and armory would be placed around the area making a cohesive theme. It was a bit of a bummer not to see my previous works since this area is so large and it didn’t make sense why they couldn’t. There was only one other vehicle in the Warhammer DLC that required the main stage to sit on so we could clean it, but there are plenty of spaces in the garage where it could have sat once it was done. It was odd to go back into the garage in the final stages only to see it so empty.

PowerWash Simulator’s DLC: Warhammer 40,000 was reviewed by Steam code generously provided by PressEngine.