I distinctly remember playing the first Lawn Mowing Simulator back in 2021 and getting dragged into a party chat with two friends who wanted to check if I was OK, as they couldn’t understand why I was playing a game about trimming virtual grass. It was a fair point, and despite attempts on my part, I was unable to convince them that it was actually an incredibly relaxing and enjoyable experience. Five years later we’ve now got Lawn Mowing Simulator 2, and while I’d like to talk your ears off about how it fits in with the best of the genre, unfortunately there are a few issues that means it doesn’t quite make the cut.
As with the first game there are two core aspects of Lawn Mowing Simulator 2: half of your time will be spent out on jobs while the other half is spent fiddling with some fairly light business management mechanics. You inherit the business from your uncle, along with some basic equipment, and your first job is to customise the business name and logo to your tastes. This was minutes into the game and I came across my first bug – I couldn’t actually navigate to the logo customisation, the game simply wouldn’t let me despite there being a tab for it. There were issues opening and using the in-game keyboard that made naming my company more effort than it should have been too, and it was a disappointing introduction to the game.
Once you’ve chosen your starting mower then you can start taking on jobs from the map in your office. The jobs themselves are engaging enough, and you’ll spend your time either mowing lawns, strimming weeds or removing leaves and debris, with different equipment required for each job. I typically start by running around and picking up any crap that’s been left lying around, like newspapers or old bottles, before using the leaf blower to move the leaves off the paths. In some jobs you get a tarp to blow them onto which makes removal much easier, but often you’re just left to blow them into the road or a neighbours garden, which still counts as completing the task but doesn’t feel like I’m doing it properly. Strimming weeds is equally simple, and you just need to go from patch to patch and hold the right trigger to remove them. Neither mechanic is particularly complex but at least give a bit of variety to the game.
Lawn mowing is, unsurprisingly, the bulk of the work, and this is where the more simulation-focused players will likely get their kicks. There’s about a dozen different models in the game, and I believe they’re all licensed brands, for those that want that. They all have different stats, such as top speeds, strength, turning circles and whether they contain clippings or just spew them out, which becomes more debris for you to clear. I’ll be honest, I have no clue about ride-on lawn mowers, but they do feel distinct to drive and it’s easy to see how your starting model differs from one that costs $14,000.
The actual mowing element is as you’d expect: you drive up and down the grass trying to trim it all to the height requested by the client. This is where the game becomes a bit hypnotic, as you see the patterns your mower leaves behind and you try to get uniform lines on the lawns, or work your way from the outside to the centre in a circular pattern. As with the first game, it’s easy to get sucked in.
Or it would be, if the game wasn’t quite as buggy as it is. The visual performance on PS5 Pro is pretty poor, and while the visuals are nice and vivid, they’re not particularly high quality, and once you start moving there’s constant screen tearing and frame drops. The screenshots in this review are from the Steam page, and I can assure you the game doesn’t look this nice on PS5! I found the performance quite distracting, especially in first-person which is how I like to play these types of games.
The mowers themselves snag on scenery extremely easily, which makes mowing around trees or lampposts particularly annoying too, and all these little issues come together to hinder the experience. In a game like Powerwash Simulator 2 I would always complete every job 100%, even when you only need about 90% to continue. In Lawn Mowing Simulator 2 I found myself doing the bare minimum on each task so I could get the job ticked off and move onto the next.
When not out on jobs there are some very basic business management mechanics to get stuck into. Buying additional equipment is recommended because then you can hire new employees to tackle smaller jobs while you’re out doing the big ones, which increases cashflow. Good employees don’t just get the job done but leave the customer feeling satisfied and happy, which in turn improves any bonuses they may get.
My main issue with all this was that it didn’t feel like there was much to spend your money on other than more equipment, or spending a few dollars here and there to maintain the equipment you already have. You have the entire office and warehouse to play around in when you’re between jobs, but really this could have just been a menu as there’s no real benefit from having it as a physical location.
Lawn Mowing Simulator 2 can be a relaxing and hypnotic experience at times, but between visual issues and repetitive jobs and locations it’s unfortunately not going to sit with the best in the genre. With realistic mowers and plenty of settings for tailing the simulator experience though I’m sure there are some fans out there who will really enjoy it.