Surgeon Simulator 2013

1.0 Story/Setting

You are Nigel, a doctor with a desk full of bloody chores to do. You have your case files and a single floppy disk inserted to your outdated computer that shows you the operating-hand basics. You may get a phone call or two which are hard to understand and I shortly lost interest in trying to. That's it. Next you are in the operating room ready to dig up a heart.

Before, when I said that the developers could have done more to make this game better and more engrossing, this is the area I was referring to. Make Nigel a pill-popping addict who is on probation by his superiors and how well you operate determines whether Nigel will get promoted and someday open his own practice in Thousand Oaks, taking the temperatures and the dividend checks of it's wealthy and aging upper crust, or conversely, whether he will be forced into the seedy underworld, performing back-alley abortions in some dark, dank area of Detroit. You see? Incentives for progress.

5.0 Gameplay

The beginning desk sequence which is in essence the main menu, is pretty creative and like the rest of the game, almost everything is interactive. You can insert and eject disks from the computer, answer the phone and scribble on the note pad. The controls are done using keystrokes to control the individual fingers of the hand while your right and left mouse buttons control the up down and side to side motions. The game is physics-based so gravity plays a key role in the movement and behaviors of each scene.

Let me go ahead and describe what it is like to try and guide one big stupid hand (hitherto known as BSH). Infuriating. I've never wanted to strangle an animated limb so badly in all my life. It's just so big and so stupid! You begin the game performing a heart transplant in a serene operating room. On the tables surrounding you there are various tools of the profession as well as some seemingly torture-oriented utensils. You have to experiment a bit to figure out how to remove ribs and incidental organs. Only after you have successfully (successfully is used very loosely here) perform this operation you will notice a new floppy disk added to the pile. You can stick that in the disk drive and it will give you hints on surgical technique and how to use the syringes.

Once you have maim...I mean saved your patients on the operating table, your atrocious surgical skills are put to the test again, this time while an ambulance is barreling down the road, littering your area and your patient's chest cavity with various debris. You watch in horror as the heart you are to use to save this poor hapless soul is catapulted through the air coming to rest in a small nook between the cooler it came in and the ambulance wall. Now you can only wait and hope that whatever lead-footed psycho is driving will hit a speed bump and jar the heart from it's trapped and useless position. I muddled through this segment and by the end I felt I had a slightly better grasp on the controls. However, upon completion a new disk was waiting for me and the situation went from bad to worse. I will not throw out a spoiler here, all I will say is what I silently said to myself as I exited the game: “Eff ya”.

For me, the fun in this game was not completing open heart surgery or providing anesthetized victims, er, patients with a new brain. It was experimenting with the capabilities of the BSH and wreaking havoc on my surroundings. It was seeing how far I could throw a spleen or gratuitously poking the patient with a hypodermic needle so that blood would squirt out of their nose under the mask. Any simulation game taken too seriously is not fun, it is work. That is why simulation technology was created so that one could become comfortable with a specialized series of tasks before actually having to perform those tasks in the real world. I must also admit at this point to having the attention span of a 6 year old. This being said, once the initial fascination of being able to interact with pretty much everything in my environment wore off, I was left with frustration and an overwhelming hatred of the BSH.

On a side note, I was going to do a video for this game, but I found one on Youtube that would be impossible to outdo which I have linked here for your enjoyment: Surgeon Simulator 2013 :: With Dr Brraagghh - Heart Transplant

9.0 Graphics

The visuals in this game are most certainly the biggest appeal (besides being able to fling bits of lower intestine all about the room). The artwork establishes a sense of comedy in every scene while still representing a remarkably realistic (though obviously very simplified) view of the internal nastiness that makes up each and every one of us. The game is done in 3D first-person perspective, and is done well.

7.0 Soundtrack

The music is simple and pleasant, but the sound effects are pretty unnerving. Saw breaking through bone and the squishy squashy softness of a brain resting on the forehead of it's owner echo through the operating space. Beeps from the vitals monitor and the inhale/exhale of the breathing machine really set the stage for your surgical procedures. The sounds also help you to know when the BSH actually has a hold of something useful. For instance, there's a helpful clink when a scalpel is acquired and wet slurping sound when you grab a handful of organ. Because the BSH is so big and so stupid it is sometimes hard to tell whether you have successfully grabbed the intended target or whether you're just flailing about like an idiot.

4.0 Bang For Your Buck

If you can get this game on sale I would say purchase it, if only to gross out friends and family on holidays. I paid $9.99 on Steam and was pretty much over it in about an hour and a half. It won't make the list of my faves, but for novelty's sake it's a safe bet if you like sim games, like blood and gore, and can get it for $5.00.