![]() It might not leap out straight away, because it works so well as a pick up, put down comedy game, but Surgeon Simulator draws on several emotional experiences that don't often render in videogames. Story, actually, is one of Surgeon Simulator's strongest aspects. To coin a phrase so flamboyant and smug I'll have to punch myself in the face once I finish typing it, it's ludo-narrative assonance. It's the opposite of so many games, especially recent Simulator cash-ins, where the designers are manipulating all the fun. It hits a tiny, very hard to reach sweet-spot where everyone involved in the game is riffing off each other, where it becomes symbiotic. There's a great mix in Surgeon Simulator between a developer laying some ground rules and a player making his own fun. There are some baseline mechanics to help you on the way to failure, but they're basically just props. If your patient dies on the slab, messily, hilariously, it's YOUR fault. It's not rigged – it's not a cheap laugh that's deliberately dicking you over for the developer's amusement. With enough practice and skill, you can perform the surgeries without any spilled gizzards. Invariably, your character's alien hand syndrome means your patient ends up with guts strewn on the floor, blood squirting out his head, a lung where his heart should be.īut here's the rub: you CAN do it. Here you are, trying to do a double kidney transplant, and you have to squeeze down five different buttons just to pick up a scalpel. ![]() It feels constantly like you're having to brush your arm through treacle, like the nerves in your fingertips are shot. The only thing you control is your character's right-hand, which is moved using the analogue sticks and the shoulder buttons. The pitch in Surgeon Simulator is that you're a real surgeon, with real patients, needing real operations, but you seem to be either a drunk or dizzy. ![]() It's like a Phil Silvers comedy, where however plain the task, you know he's going to screw it up. It's not top-down "you will laugh at this because it's so bloody crazy" it's genuine. Real humour comes from games like Surgeon Simulator, now on PS4, where players are put in a mundane situation and left to find their own laughs. It's just kind of arrogant and self-effacing, like "he he, ho ho, aren't videogames CRAZY?!" Just giving people something wacky to play as, like a goat or a slice of ham or whatever, isn't funny. But most of the developers, particularly those behind stuff like Rock Simulator, aren't getting the joke. Ironic, so-called satirical "Simulator" games are vogue right now. ![]()
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