Game Reviews

...Which is also kind of the point. The vast majority of Surgeon Simulator’s entertainment value isn’t in actually completing surgeries and seeing patients off to a speedy recovery, but in how badly you fumble even the simplest of acts. Combined with the somewhat-realistic and occasionally buggy physics, the clumsy controls turn every mundane task into an absurdist spectacle as you struggle to grab a bone saw, or maybe knock over a whole rack of tools in your attempt to grab a small scalpel, or rake a laser across the patient's face. Even successfully finishing a surgery is cause for laughter, as “success” involves little more than ripping out the old organs and haphazardly tossing the replacement ones in. As long as the heart's replaced, it doesn't matter if the lungs have been tossed on the operating room floor.

Occasionally the silly controls have caused me frustration when I failed and had to repeat a surgery, but on the flipside overcoming them makes each successful procedure even more gratifying. Once I understood the limits and capabilities of the controls, I became pretty competent at mangling patients in a timely fashion.

That's when it becomes apparent that there's more depth here than the gruesome comedy lets on. Sure, you can slice and smash your way to victory by operating like a psychopath (you can perform brain surgery with a hatchet, for example), but you'll barely earn a passing grade. Instead, you can learn the subtleties of Surgeon Simulator’s systems to make situations that previously seemed dire manageable. Many aren't explained at all, which rewards experimentation. For instance, I had no idea you could stabilize a patient’s bleeding by injecting him with the green serum (the same one will cause you to get high if you accidentally prick yourself). I also had no clue that there are subtle hints about where to make incisions. I never managed to completely overcome all the confusion and complexity of the controls, but surgeries became easier – and I felt more awesome and skillful – as I applied what I learned.

I wish there were more than three surgeries to apply that knowledge to, though. After you successfully transplant a heart, a set of kidneys, and a brain, the only thing left to do is do them again in a moving ambulance, where the tools – and everything else – bounce around as the ambulance goes over bumps. The ambulance missions add a bit of variety to the gameplay, and make for plenty of moments of hilarity, but not when it screws you. When you lose simply because random bumps cause an essential tool or the replacement organ to fly off screen several minutes into a mission, it’s infuriating.

One final piece of advice for would-be surgeons: Surgeon Simulator 2013 rewards the curious. Explore everything in the interactive main menu. Changing the very limited graphical settings is a bit of a pain, as it's done with the same cumbersome controls, but several of the items lying around the desk can be manipulated in amusing ways. You just might find one of the best pieces of hidden content I’ve seen in a long time.