Drug Dealer Simulator on Xbox: A Hilariously Clunky Time - Mini Review

XPN Network
Aug 18
3 min read

Here’s the straight dope: Drug Dealer Simulator on Xbox is the kind of sandbox that makes you grin through the glitches. If you’re the sort who finds charm in half-baked animations and game-breaking bugs, buckle up as this port of gritty street hustle is your weird new best friend.

Cook, Hustle, Repeat

Every morning you wake up, roll your sleeves, and dive into the most illegal chemistry set imaginable.

Key highlights:

Lab Management
Assemble your cook shack from a rickety prefab garage to a “fully equipped” underground lair. Every pot and beaker placement feels like juggling hot knives. One slip and your product is a puddle of worthless goo.
Street Trading
Stumble through alleyway meetups, wheel deals on the curb, and dodge opportunistic pigs. The AI customers follow predictable routines, but their over-eager rubbernecking never fails to amuse.
Upgrades and Expansion
Spend your hard-earned stacks on ingredient quality, stealth upgrades, or that neon sign that screams “Not a Drug Lab.” Each purchase unlocks fresh grindy missions, though sometimes the trigger zone refuses to register your controller input—gave me plenty of facepalm moments.
The Clunk Factor
True aficionados adore the choppy vehicle handling and camera hiccups. You’ll learn to swerve like a maniac, bounce off curbs, and pray you don’t get rammed by an AI squad car.

Visually, the game rides the retro-neon wave but leans into low-poly humans and blocky buildings.

Texture Pop-Ins
Drive down the boulevard and watch city textures load with dramatic flair. It’s like early 2000s nostalgia but not the good kind.
Frame Rate
Generally holds steady at 30 FPS, dipping during heavy traffic. If you squint, the stutter almost feels intentional.
Lighting and Effects
Neon glows, shadow flickers, and hazy street lamps set the atmosphere, even if your car occasionally teleports through walls.

On PC, Drug Dealer Simulator feels like a lab coat tailored to your fingertips: menus snap open under the precision of a mouse click, and keyboard shortcuts let you juggle ingredient ratios with surgeon-like accuracy. Texture settings can be cranked up to “I can see every fleck of dust,” draw distances stretch city blocks into the horizon, and shader tweaks let you dial in neon glows or gritty grime as you please. Meanwhile, the Steam Workshop transforms the game into a mad scientist’s playground, bursting with community-made mods that range from new vehicle kits to absurd narrative expansions ideal for those who want to spice up the street trade with extra weirdness.

On Xbox, the experience is more like trying to mix chemicals with oven mitts: the controller-driven UI works fine once you learn its quirks, but navigating nested menus often feels sluggish, as though each button press is weighed down by a bag of cash you just scored. Graphics are locked to preset modes: Low, Medium, or “I’m Desperate” so you’ll sometimes notice textures load in dramatically mid-chase, and frame rates dip during densely populated neighbourhoods. There’s no official mod support to patch in community inventions, and updates arrive only after passing Microsoft’s certification gauntlet, which means console players wait longer for bug fixes and new content. On the bright side, the snapped-to-30 FPS steadiness prevents sudden performance leaps that might break your immersion, while the Xbox One X and Series X squeeze a bit more clarity out of the same assets. Ultimately, PC delivers a custom-fit crime lab with endless tinkering, and Xbox offers a rugged trunk-of-your-car vibe. Its less polished, more “hold my beer” charm, perfect for anyone who laughs in the face of technical hiccups.

Drug Dealer Simulator on Xbox is a gloriously imperfect crime sim. It janks, it stutters, it occasionally freezes you mid-deal but every quirk feels like secret sauce for those who savour clunky simulators. If you relish mastering a game world that fights back, you’ll find endless dark comedy in its rough edges.

XPN Rating: 3 out of 5 (SILVER)