Anyone familiar with the Trauma Centre series of games will find that the essence of that series in Touch Mechanic, except you'll be excanging your scalpel for screwdrivers, and go from setting bones to re-jiggering axles. Inside you'll find is a very linear story which you'll follow your nameless protagonist as he strives to become a professional racing mechanic, aswell as a solid technical effort for the car enthusiast and hobbyist alike.
You'll start off a fresh faced young kid who wanders into a Garage looking for work and trying to escape from a shifty past. From there you'll learn the basics or Mechanics, from changing a tyre and air filter, to more complex work such as installing a turbocharger to refitting a quad exhaust. The story is told through subtiltled character images a la trauma centre, but mostly serves as a good way to string each job together. Most of the work is your basic smash repair stuff, so don't expect Pimp My Ride style work.
As you complete jobs you'll earn money based on the time taken to complete them, and this allows you to buy parts for your own car. As you progress through the story more parts will become available. This is somewhat of a freeplay mode which removes the timer and penalties so you can work on your car at your own pace. The game does make it mandatory to do this as the story will have you submitting your car to a custom ride show, and halts your progress until you rank high enough. You have the choice from 4 run down cars and you will get to choose which parts and what colour gets put in, on or under your ride.
All the work is done via the DS touch screen. This involves you selecting an area of the car to work on, selecting the right tools from the menu, and doing the appropriate gesture. The controls feel clean and responsive, although there were times when selecting the part of the car to work on was not responding at all. Overall the mechanics of the game work well in context and made me feel as much like as a mechanic as a handheld video game will allow.
And there will be times when you feel like your on the job. Complex mechanical tinkering is often multiplied twice (front and back, left and right) which can leave you spending too much of your time unscrewing/rescrewing nuts, bolts and (spoilers!)screws. Shopping for new part can also be a drag as the UI doesnt allow for any sort of preview feature, so if you dont know the difference between a DUB kit and a DONK kit, you'll have to spend a good portion of your hard earned money, and spend a chunk of time installing them to find out.
All in all, i had fun with this game. The story was about as much as you can expect out of this sort of game, but it is backed up with a solid mechanical system. I was surprised to find how much time i sank into customising my own ride. What you end up with is a solid DS game that offers alot to gamers whether they're enthusiasts or have only a passing interest.