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115 of 116 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
This is a REALLY fun game!, September 30, 2002
It's *almost* as addicting as The Sims. There, I said it. Out of the sim games out there, this is my favorite and because there are so many sim games out there, that's saying a lot! The graphics are really sharp, but be careful. I'm running a 1gig system with 256MB RAM and a Geforce2 Pro and it's just enough to keep it running good. Lesser systems might struggle.The game is more "Virtual Resort" than it is "Spring Break" (it's sold as "Beach Life" in the U.K.) The object is simple enough, build a vacation spot that everyone will want to come to. At the beginning you start out with the basics, a hotel, a few food vendors, builders, cleaning staff, mechanics, and some extras to keep the guests happy. As you progress in the game, more and more items become available. Soon, you'll have discos, casinos, outdoor activities such as snorkeling and surfing gear, fishing trips, paddle-boats, plus a variety of different bars and nightclubs for people to spend their cash on. Each building has a certain appeal to males or females and you can tweak the settings such as the type of drinks served and even the alcohol strength of the drinks, how often you want the mechanic to stop by, the prices you want to charge, etc... Your staff operates in true sim fashion - work them too long and they'll start getting mad, pay them more and they'll work even harder, get too cheap and the lifeguard might look the other way as your guests drown or get eaten by sharks. So what makes this game better than the other sim-knockoffs out there? In short, it's challenging but not extremely difficult, it's funny, and yes, it's addicting. I'm currently stuck on the seventh level and with most games hitting a roadblock is enough to make me put it down and look for something else. With this game, though, I keep coming back to it thinking maybe if I just tweak one more thing... Keeping everyone happy is a juggling act. With your limited funds you need to build what you can to keep your customers from getting mad and leaving. But once the money starts rolling in, you can splurge on the more expensive items to really get the party going and turn your operation into a five-star resort. Customers have a variety of desires such as beautiful scenery, reasonable prices, cleanliness, a variety of places to eat and drink, members of the opposite sex to party with, and necessities like a nearby bathroom and accommodations to stay in. The developers have struck a nice balance of keeping you busy solving the various problems while still leaving you enough time to sit back and enjoy the fruits of your labor. One of the best parts of the game is following the guests around and reading what they're thinking about as they can say some really off-the-wall stuff. For instance, one of the guests might say "those two were beautiful-- the girl was really pretty too!" Feed someone a good meal and they might say something like "that meal was so good I'm not going to the toilet so I don't have to part company with it!" As the game progresses, your missions become more risque. For instance, you might need to get a certain number of guests to go for a "romp" on the beach or you might have to get a certain number drunk within a certain time limit. It's not as easy as it sounds. I'm giving the beer away, yet I still can't seem to get enough people drunk to get to the next level (you'd think that'd be the least of my worries!) Plus, making the drinks too strong will cause fights to break out all over the place, vandalism, or even nonstop vomiting (much to the chagrin of the cleaning crew.) I also have to give a thumbs-up to the great music included in the game. The only thing that bugs me is it tends to cut off the songs before they're finished. At first I thought it was a problem with the game until I realized it switches from a daytime selection of jazz and lounge to a nighttime selection of rhythmic club music. Even if you don't like this type of music, no problem, just copy your favorite mp3's into the game and you've got your own jukebox selection. Is the game perfect? Not quite. It's not difficult or expensive to keep your staff happy, just pay them a little more than what they start off with and you won't even have to worry about them. You also have to make a lot of lucky guesses when building in areas with limited space as you don't know how big a particular building is going to be until you have the funds to buy it outright. This makes advance planning difficult. You can add scenic items such as trees, flowers, signs, lighting, fountains, and statues, but you can't modify the terrain itself. If that building won't fit because it's sitting on one little square of beach, you're out of luck. As you complete each mission, you can go back later and build a new resort from scratch in "sandbox" mode. It's a nice feature, but I doubt it will add much replayability to the game. These are minor gripes, though. All in all, the game is a lot of fun to play and I haven't run into any bugs or system crashes either. If you like economic sims and the subject matter appeals to you I'd highly recommend it. Hope the review helped!
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