You are rudely awoken by your alarm blaring in your throbbing head, uragh, what time is it? 11 am? Damn I’m late, I must have partied too hard last night. Oh, I have a missed call, and I have lost my job. Great. What am I going to do now? Probably should sell drugs. Luckily, I have a Cartel connection to get me started. Sound familiar? Yeah me neither…
As a Simulator nerd, Drug Dealer Simulator has been on my radar for quite some time. Originally released on PC in 2020, 5 years later, Movie Games S.A. announced a console release for PlayStation 4 & 5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series S/X. I feel it’s the Sim Gods telling me it’s time.
In saying that, it is a bizarre decision, seeing as there is a sequel that is less than a year old and, by the looks of it, is a much more polished experience. Weird.
Published by Movie Games S.A. and developed by Byterunners, Drug Dealer Simulator has you take on the role of a low-level drug pusher with very big ambitions.
Change in Career
Upon starting your career transition, you quickly discover that just like any corporate ladder, those at the bottom do all the heavy lifting.
So, let’s grab our baggy and get started.
Our first task is to get some product to sell. Luckily, we already have a contact. You order through your laptop in your room. Apparently it’s secure? Then we wait. There is a lot of waiting in Drug Dealer Simulator. Depending on how much you order, it can take anywhere from 1 to 6 hours for your order to be ready. This can be sped up while you are in your apartment by pressing down on the D-Pad
Once we get the notification, it’s time to go and pick it up. Your order is stashed in a dead drop. It could be close or on the other side of town. You are given a location and a vague hint like “it’s in the planter box by the Cemetery”. Once you reach the Cemetery, you need to look around for a white X. Grab your stuff and head home. Be wary though, if you leave the dead drop for too long, it will be stolen.
Will You Be My Friend?
Once we have our product, we need to break it down into smaller bags for sale. This took me a hot minute to figure out how it works. In your apartment, there is a workstation that you need to put jars and mixing bowls on to get started. You start your journey with Weed and Amp. You gain access to harder drugs as you progress.
The weed is easy, just add it to the jar and then package the product into smaller bags.
The Amp is a different story. You must pour it onto a mixing tray before you re-package it. However, this is where you can add a little something extra to make it go a little further. There are lots of different things you can add, like baking powder or aspirin. Eventually, you will have access to other additions. However, you must be careful, as the more you add, will lower the quality. The lower the quality, the lower the price. You can also make it toxic, which will kill your customers. Which is bad for business.
Now we have our product, we must go out and find some customers.
The map is split up into blocks, and you can only sell in the blocks you have reputation in. You will unlock new blocks as you raise your rep in the currently unlocked blocks. The more blocks you have unlocked, the more customers you can get. You also have a can of spray paint, which can be used to raise your reputation. Once your rep is high enough, your phone will start ringing for orders. You must deliver exactly what is ordered promptly. The quicker you deliver, the more reputation you will get.
That is the basic loop of Drug Dealer Simulator. Order, Collect, Cut, Deliver, Repeat.
The Sky is the Limit
As you start to get more customers, they start to order more product. Then you start to expand your reach across the city, and all of a sudden you can’t keep up. Luckily, one of your customers asks if they can work for you. Now they have become a dealer and will buy larger quantities. However, they don’t pay instantly like your customers, but the payoff is better in the long run.
Whoop Whoop, it’s the Sound of the Police
Now you are starting to roll in the Benjamin’s but what are you going to do with all this cash? Buy cool things! Bigger safe houses, nicer furniture, bigger lab equipment. It all sounds great. However, stores don’t want your dirty money. So, you have to pop it in the bank. But your account keeps getting flagged with suspicious transactions. Introducing money laundering. For a price, you can “invest” in local businesses for a return of clean money. At the start, you lose 40%, but now you can use it. The more you invest, the more your return will be.
Speaking of thorns in your side, we haven’t even talked about the police. The local cops are out in force, walking the beat as you try to make your deliveries. If you are spotted, you do have a chance to escape. Fantastic chase music will erupt, and a foot pursuit is on. If you can lose the cops, you are solid. But if they catch you, you are fined, and all your product is confiscated. Which can be devastating if you have just picked up a massive order.
As you progress through the game, you earn XP, which can be spent on upgrading skills like increasing your stamina or looking less shady to the police.
How do I Look?
I’m not going to sugar coat this. Drug Dealer Simulator is not pretty. There are weird clipping issues and color issues. Especially with dark areas and hair. It looks a lot worse than the PC version. Like I said at the start, I’m not sure why they ported Drug Dealer Simulator when there is a Drug Dealer Simulator 2 that looks 10x better.
I’m not sure if it was a bug or I missed a story beat, but roughly 10 hours in, I was introduced to an exporter that wants extremely large quantities of product. I delivered it to him once, and from then on, he ghosted me. I’m currently sitting at just over 20 hours. I have unlocked the whole map and raised my reputation to almost max in all blocks, and I have never heard from him again. I also know you can start producing your own product to cut down on costs, but again, that has never become available to me. Whether those features are not available in the console version?
Final Verdict
Like most simulation games the setting up of procedures and unlocking things to make your tasks easier is all the fun. Once you reach end game and everything is unlocked and automated it loses a lot of its appeal. Drug Simulator fits into that category. After roughly 20 hours I had done everything Drug Dealer Simulator had to offer, and I was left delivering the same 2g to the same customer every 5 minutes. If I was you, I would skip this and go straight to Drug Dealer Simulator 2.
Gamer Social Club was supplied a copy of Drug Dealer Simulator for the purpose of this review.
Reviewed on Xbox Series X
Drug Dealer Simulator is available on PlayStation 4 & 5, Xbox One and Series S/X and PC via Steam.
Make sure you follow The Gamer Social Club on all our social channels, BlueSky, X, Facebook, and our YouTube channel to keep up to date with news, reviews, interviews, and all sorts of fun.
We also run a Monthly “Book Club” for gamers, so join The Game Social Club Discord to become involved in the community.
The post Drug Dealer Simulator Console Release Edition Review appeared first on Gamer Social Club.