As I mentioned,
Surgeon Simulator is a QWOP game. For those of you that don’t know, that’s a
reference to the game QWOP, in which you raced a track runner by using the Q,
W, O, and P keys to control the upper and lower halves of each leg. The key to
the game was incredible coordination and timing. That, and not pounding your
keyboard into pieces as a result of the frustration such a control system
breeds. Surgeon Simulator utilizes a similar system, where you control the five
fingers of the one available hand with five keys (I toyed with the defaults,
but ended up using A, W, E, F, and Space). This is combined with mouse movements
and the two mouse buttons to give you position, elevation (M1), tilt (M2 +
forward/backwards), and rotation (M2 + left/right). The result is a pretty versatile
system where you can grab items by using the correct fingers (usually index and
thumb), shake organs lose from their bonds (this is particularly funny when
removing a brain), and generally have just enough control to make a terrible
mess of things.
 |
| Finding something that works for you is key in this game. You can even switch hands if you're a lefty. |
Somehow you’re
supposed to master these controls enough to successfully perform a number of
operations in varying conditions. The three basic operations are, in order, a
heart, double kidney, and brain transplant. You must complete one to advance to
the next. Once you make it through all three you’ll unlock a second set that
takes place in the back of an ambulance. Complete those and you’ll unlock a set
of zero g space operations. You’ll also unlock some additional special
operations if you’re thorough enough to mess around on the menu screen/desk
area that the game loads up and a few other places, such as an über heart
transplant on The Heavy from Team Foretress 2 (you actually take on the role of
The Medic in that one).
Operations can
range from simple to pretty difficult, though that is largely due to the
setting, because trying to avoid slicing your patient to death with a laser is
a bit more difficult when the ambulance you’re in hits a large bump. For the
basic heart transplant, which is the first level you’ll have access to, you
must break open the rib cage, remove the lungs, cut the heart free from all the
valve connections, and place a new heart in the same location. Removing the
esophagus helps, because the heart is somewhat behind that. Tools such as a
hammer, bone saw, laser (though not in this first level), are great things for
breaking bones, while kidney knifes, scalpels, and scissors are made for
slicing the connections that hold organs in place. However, all those tools are
also more than perfect for inadvertently stabbing your patient in the gut,
organs, and any other number of places that will cause a bit of blood loss and
bleeding, which will eventually cause the patient to die, and you to fail the
mission.
 |
| Using a bone saw as a hammer to smash away a skull is probably not the best idea, but it does work. |
If you have a
patient that is bleeding profusely, you can utilize a nice little item to save
yourself from failure. The green syringe will stanch the bleeding, though
multiple stabbings may be required if the blood loss rate is particularly high.
Just be careful, because touching the needle of the green syringe will cause
you to hallucinate, making completing the surgery a bit more difficult. The
blue syringe can cure you, but don’t prick the patient with this one, otherwise
you’ll be in trouble. In a similar game altering experience, you might want to
avoid sticking anything in the power socket, otherwise you’ll have to suffer
having your mouse movements reversed. In keeping with the joke like nature of
this game, there is actually an achievement for completing a level after being
electrocuted, while suffering the drug trip from touching the green syringe,
and both at the same time. Oddly enough, I found it the easiest to complete all
of these while performing brain surgery…
Other
achievements make up challenges that range from improving your performance,
such as getting a high score on every mission, to the comical, like finishing a
brain surgery by throwing the brain into the skull like it’s a basketball.
Completing an operation with a minimal time frame or with minimal blood loss are
some of the more serious and difficult achievements, as well as key to
achieving a high score, and while they are something you can complete at the same
time, minimal blood loss requires precision while minimal time can be
accomplished by taking a hammer and smashing out the rib cage or skull in a
single hit (that’s about half the total blood right there) dicing up organs
with a bone saw, and throwing the heart in the generally correct area with 10
ml of blood to spare.
 |
| Got a ton of achievements on my first Double Kidney Transplant in an Ambulance, including minimal blood loss and speed. Funny thing is I never managed to get these for the regular operation. |
The control
system is the “difficult” thing about this game, and aside from achievements to
do things quickly or with minimal blood loss, or critical organs flying out of
the back of an ambulance or floating off in space, really the only challenging
thing about this game. Part of that stems from the controls being clumsy and
incomplete. I say incomplete because there is no way to pivot the hand left and
right at the wrist, only tilt the hand up and down (think of it this way, you can pivot the hand around the X and Y axis, but not the Z axis). The result is that you’re
not able to line the hand up very well with objects that are at an angle,
including organs that are packed in a particular way, or pick up an object,
rotate, drop, and pick up again so that it’s in a better position for the
cutting, smashing, etc. you’ll be doing. Perhaps this could have been
accomplished by pressing M3 + left/right mouse movement? Or maybe that should
be an M1 ability, and the scroll wheel could be used to control the elevation
of the hand, which would be a major improvement over the current system, which
descends as long as M1 is pressed, and comes rising up the second you let get.
If you can master the controls, and even if you get a little lucky, you’ll
breeze through this game.
All and all
Surgeon Simulator 2013 is a silly little game that’s nice to put some time into
now and then, though that’s probably more so for some of the more ridiculous
achievements than any serious attempt at surgery. The game could use some
improvement, and there are some things that are ridiculously more difficult
than they should be, such as what it takes to try and get the patient’s right
kidney out, which proved to be so difficult that I could not for the life of me
complete the speed achievement for the standard mission, despite getting both
the minimal time and bloodless achievements on my first attempt at a double
kidney transplant in the ambulance, because the awkward physics system can work
in your favor and jar the old organ out of place, even if your hand can’t.
Still, the game makes for a nice break from some of the other more serious
games that require tons of time (I took a break from Dark Souls to play this),
and can be relaxing in a surprisingly frustrating way. I put 8 hours into it,
which got me through most of the 11 missions with an A++ rating, as well as two
thirds of the achievements. I got it at $2.50, which is probably about right,
but the $3.33 I’ve seen it for a few times wouldn’t be a bad deal either. This
is really the kind of game that needs a demo, because then you could experience
for yourself the strange combination of fun and frustration that results for
the uniquely awkward gameplay, the result of which warrants a frustrating yet
humorously enjoyable 7 out of 10.
So, the final breakdown:
Score: 7/10
Suggested Price: $3.33, but I have seen it at $2.50
***
For more Surgeon Simulator 2013, check out this
collection of screenshots otherwise unused in this review. Click on any one for
a large image.
.png)
.png)
.png)
.png)
.png)
.png)
.png)
.png)
.png)
.png)
.png)
.png)
.png)
.png)
.png)
.png)
.png)
.png)
.png)
.png)
.png)
.png)
.png)
.png)
.png)
.png)
.png)
.png)
.png)
.png)
.png)
