Surgeon Simulator

See this guy? That’s you now. Actually, no, you’re worse.

We're having some bloody good fun around here!

There are some gimmick games on Steam that are a lot of fun. They’re usually all about putting you in silly situations or impairing your abilities, after which you can go wild and do whatever you want, once you've byspassed those limitations. I reviewed one such game last year: Goat Simulator. Hm, come to think of it, a lot of those games are simulators… Which brings me to today’s game: Surgeon Simulator. A game that begs to be played with an overpriced virtual reality headset and, very importantly, no medical studies whatsoever. I don't have a VR headset, but I do lack medical studies - so I should be fine.

Bossa Studios UK brings to us the perfect game if you love bloodied, gory black comedy – and as weird as it may sound, I am in that category. Hey, there’s a reason I have the Final Destination films among my favorite guilty pleasures. I just look at the Steam achievements for this game, and I’m already laughing my ass off.

No anesthetics; Nigel does things
the old way. He whistles a lullaby
to put his patient to sleep.

Will I even be able to remove the cloth from the patient?

You are now Nigel Burke, disembodied hand and arm moving around and pretending to be a person. Or rather, you’re the person attached to that hand and arm, but nobody cares about him. All that matters is that you’ve got a single hand to do everything, and you have to rely on your extremely poor skills, sheer clumsiness, and no other hand whatsoever in order to complete procedures that are way too complex and risky. Nigel is such a butterfingers, he can barely grab stuff without making a mess… and now he’s playing into people’s entrails! What’s next, he’s gonna carve his initials on the organs he’s transplanting? He’s a blunder, but he’s not crazy, come on. (And before you laugh at this, I’ll let you know that this actually happened – here’s the link to the article. Yes, someone actually did that. Reality is worse than fiction, yadda yadda.)

Just a D score? I'm never going to get out of medical school
with this!
...What do you mean, I'm already out of medical school?

I may be joking around using the left hand, but I draw the
line at wrapping the guy's big intestine around his head like
it's a scarf. Pfft~ No! Actually, I'mma do it.

And of course, you’re not in control of your better hand, oh no. You pick your dominant hand in the Options menu… but once we get to the game proper, you’ll always have the opposite hand to control. Have you ever tried to do everything with your left hand for a day if you’re right-handed? Or with your right if you’re a leftie? Now imagine a surgeon doing that in the operation room. Oh, the extreme unprofessionalism! I dunno, maybe Nigel is practicing for his next swordfight at the medieval fair and he’s planning the whole “I am not left-handed” shtick from Princess Bride.

I make fun of the plush toys at the gas station, Nigel puts his patients in grave danger by using his non-dominant hand alone. We all have our own ways to find some fun at work. I mean, give the poor surgeon a break, he just broke up and he’s struggling on the dating scene. Why is that important? It isn’t! But with some research as you progress through the game, you can find a girl’s phone number and later call her. But that's just a side-quest. We'll worry about that later; For now, we have entrails to mess with.

Looking at the Before/After picture, I have to say,
reconstructive surgery really does wonders.
What do you mean, it's not after a surgery?

Meet Bob Murton. He’s our first patient. Down on his luck, probably gone through the struggles of life, divorced, his start-up enterprise didn’t work, and to top it all off he’s found in the worst car accident ever seen in the UK in recent years. He’s had it so bad, he needs an everything transplant – but since this game can’t go on forever, we’ll just replace his heart, his kidneys and his brain. Each one of those is pretty much mandatory for life, and this guy had to have them all replaced one by one by this surgeon that can’t even grab the phone off the hook without making a goddamn mess. And in the Anniversary Edition of Surgeon Simulator, you also replace his eyes and his rotten teeth.

Oh no! Uh... Phoenix Down! Phoenix Down!
Cure Death!
Dammit Bob, don't Aerith on me, I need you alive!

Besides, messed up like that guy was, by that point you don’t want to bother with so many operations. It’s gonna be cheaper to send this one to the morgue and buy a brand new Bob instead.

I'll take care of that, it won't be lung! I hope you can
stomach it! This guy will live, I promise! He'll be a liver!
I have the guts to do it, I know this won't be in vein!

What awaits you inside this patient? A ribcage to crack open. Some lungs to remove. The oesophagus to cut off. A pesky stomach. It ain’t like he’s gonna be needing them. Besides, I’m not up on my medical training, but those grow back, right? Just drop the organs around your table, throw away some of the useless stuff… seriously, who keeps a bottle of orange soda on the operating table? This stuff uses up room. Drop them on the floor, everything’s going to be fine. As soon as you complete your mission, it instantly ends, no need to patch up the patient again. Makes one wonder, what left Bob in the worse state in the end: The car accident or the surgeon?

He'll be crapping teeth for the next two weeks, too.

Transplanting new kidneys or a new brain involves even more damage being done to the body, even more pieces removed, an entire skull top cracked open. Oh, and with the bonus missions in the Anniversary Edition, we have some fun transplanting new eyes and new teeth in Bob, by popping the original eyes and smashing the rotten teeth out before replacing them. Just remember which teeth were rotten, as you'll replace as many as needed until you've replaced the right ones. You can just smash them all if you want, but it just means more work. Thankfully, nobody cares if you put any kind of tooth in any place. He’ll be a hit on the dating scene as That Man With Molars Where Canines Should Be! And if that doesn’t work, he can just open a roadside attraction.

Noooo! My tools are leaving me!

Oh, but your tasks don’t end there. Once you’ve got the hang of the system and you know what to do, you unlock new sets of missions, in which you have to do the same operations with changing variables. Operate a patient in the hospital corridor: That doesn’t seem so bad. Unsanitary perhaps, but not so bad. Until you find out that you’re not stationary. It’s like you’re operating Bob in the middle of the World Championship of Nurses Racing Stretchers Through Hospitals. Your tools for the operation come and go, that includes all the items needed to crack the bones open and cut the organs inside. Except they pass by for about fifteen seconds, and seem to have selections of items almost at random, which includes the syringe for your patient if he’s bleeding too much. So if you still haven’t grasped the mechanics of… er… grasping, here’s your crash course. You have to hurry. The only way you can keep items nearby is to keep them on your patient as it’s the sole “table” you’ve got. Items have a bad tendency to go in the folds, however, which makes them difficult to retrieve. The brain and eye surgeries have the patient sitting in a wheelchair, and you have a nifty table on which to keep the tools you grab, so there’s that. Sure, that eye operation is important, but all you could find was that conveniently eye-sized 8-ball. Stick that in there, nobody will notice.

The surgery would be easier if items didn't keep flying all
over the place. But how hard would that game be
without a challenge?

And if you thought that was bad, there’s worse. After Nigel has proven that he could do his job in crazy conditions, suddenly he ends up in crazier conditions – no time to wait for the patient to get to the hospital, we need him operated in the freaking ambulance. There’s only so much a one-handed surgeon can do! And like that wasn’t enough, the ambulance is going pretty fast, and all the tools go flying about when it turns. That’s saying nothing of the speed bumps that make everything fly around while the doors swing open. Is this happening in the UK or is it actually in Quebec? That’s about as close as a video game will ever get to replicating the quality of our roadwork! Oddly enough, in some situations, the constant shaking of the ambulance can be helpful; during the double kidney transplant, the right kidney is always a pain in the ass to grab because it’s lodged in a cavity and your slippery fingers keep missing it. The road bumps can knock it out of that area, making it easier to grab.

Word of advice: Never sting yourself on the needle.
Especially past the stationary first levels.

Well, at least the patient is strapped to the table.
Same can't be said of everything else.
In fact, you can easily lose the organs behind the table...
Or they may be right in front of you, but too close to let
your hand grab them.

Oh, but it still doesn’t end there – after the ambulance operations have been completed, you receive a message by a strange organization that asks you to perform… IN SPAAAAAAAACE! Yep, that’s the final set of missions. Same operations, same transplants… In a Zero-G environment! Can someone turn on the bloody gravity? The new heart is flying away! No? Sons of bitches, if you want your astronaut – which looks an awful lot like Bob – to survive, you’re gonna bring back the gravity, or else I quit!

…Not that I can go anywhere while in space… Fine, I’m gonna give this a try. What do you mean, I have to complete all five operations? Did this astronaut get into a car accident on the space station? What the Hell happened?

That's a heavy duty.

I don’t think you can go anywhere else after beating the Space levels… but there are still a few things you can do. Three special levels await, two of which can be accessed as soon as you start playing. One of them involves a surgery on an alien – and yes, you can pull that off. I suppose you’ve become so damn good, even Area 51 requests your services. The second special level has you as the Medic from Team Fortress 2, giving the Heavy a brand new heart – an Uber-boosted heart with machinery, healing ray and all. You even have to close the wound, which is also done with the healing ray.

Here's my take on this level: If you like Donald Trump, you
will go the extra mile to save him here. If you don't,
you'll still have to, as it counts towards progression. But you
can fail as often as you want.

The last level sees you being called for a mission of national importance: One of the campaigners in the 2016 Presidential Election of the United States needs a new heart. Yes, it’s Donald Trump. Now, I’ve made my opinion of the guy pretty clear so far, so I have no qualms about doing all kinds of awful things to him while he’s under the scalpel. So much you can do: You can pull on his hair, decorate his face with makeup, you could even slap him in the face with his own Trump steaks… So apparently his hair is real, I suppose that’s something. We needed confirmation. And then of course, since you control each finger independently, you can do this.

I mean, I could have done that on a bicycle near the Presidential vehicle,
but then I'd lose my job. Might as well do it here.

Never gets old, and every day he does or says something new that justifies that flipped bird even further. Lately, I imagine it's not Nigel operating him, but someone from Hawaii.

The tiny hands, the vodka, the makeup. The hearts.
This is hilariious beyond words.

This is a basic heart transplant operation; no corridor, no ambulance, no Zero-G. Cut the ribcage open, take out the lungs, cut the oesophagus and remove it, cut the heart out… then you can replace it by one of two options: A heart of gold, or a heart of stone. Heart of gold? Whoops, I turned him into a philanthropist. Heart of stone? Oops! I've caused World War III. The best part of this bonus operation is, without a doubt, the number of in-jokes around Trump that they’ve snuck into the level. Trump is anti-vaccination, so stinging him with your syringe will actually speed up his blood loss; instead, you make him drink from the bottle of Trump vodka and, somehow, that's what lessens his blood loss. Reaching for the makeup kit will make your hands tiny. All the tools to play inside him are among the most dangerous in the game, including a spinning item that can do some serious damage, a golden axe (lots of golden tools, actually), a laser… Last but not least, the surgery is aired live on TV news, which means that the whole world can see your successful one-handed surgery – or your grisly murder of a public figure. As well as a wrapping series of quotes said by the man himself during the 2016 campaign.

Before you fly into a rage and complain, I need to tell you that whether or not you side with Trump… the level is actually very, very funny! Your political beliefs don’t really matter, this is just meant to be an additional challenge where the rules of Surgeon Simulator are bent to provide something different. And it’s quite enjoyable. Trump’s 3D face looks very much like the real deal, and the references to the guy’s various millionaire activities and statements during the 2016 campaign are just as many comical touches. It’s pretty funny if you like the guy. It's just funnier if you hate him…

Ouch! My hand is stuck!

But back to Surgeon Simulator as a whole… it’s actually quite enjoyable! The toughest part is getting used to the controls and the lack of traction caused by the use of a single hand. Grabbing things remains difficult from time to time, especially the smaller tools like scalpels and knives. Each item has its ups and downs; if you need precision, you’ll favor the small scalpel, but if you want to be quick, there’s the drill – which is large and unwieldy, and will do a ton of damage. With the blood loss per second increasing as the procedure goes, you’ll always want to keep the green syringe nearby – which means a risk of stinging yourself on it and getting a weird high. It’s also why many later levels are about shaking the items around a lot, making it easy to lose said syringe.

Drop the lungs on the floor! Who cares
if they collect some dust, it can't be that bad.

You’re not told how to complete each operation, but you’re expected to figure it out yourself, usually through trial and error – which is the funniest way to start playing the game, really. Once you’ve learned how to complete each level, you can move on to the following challenges. The whole game is hard, though you eventually learn and get better. Really, your hand is no longer the issue in the end, the physics become your worst enemy instead.

The game is packed to the brim with secrets, some of which give achievements to the player. They do milk the concept for all its worth, featuring Nigel’s office as the main menu, a location with lots of items that you can grab or interact with. There’s collecting the numbers that make up the phone number of Nigel’s date. The secrets are also common in the levels, though revealing them all would ruin the fun.

On his next pool night after the eye transplant surgery,
Bob impressed everyone around the pool table with his
dedication to the sport.

The CGI is pretty good. The physics are a major part of the experience, so they’re decent, and any glitches are kept mostly for the sake of comedy (much like in Goat Simulator!). As for the music, I wasn’t expecting much, but it’s great and uses various tones, whether it’s the tense tracks of the early levels or the peaceful music in space.

A slight issue I noticed is that, when you switch to left-handed in the options (meaning Nigel's right hand is the one you control), the keys for the fingers won't change by themselves, forcing you to do some key mapping on your own.

So yeah, this is a fun simulator! Not for the faint of heart, since it involves blood and organs. But for those who enjoy the kind of game that has tough challenges, a unique concept, and comedy that crosses the line enough times to roll back into hilarious… well, this game is for you.

I'm kinda glad I don't see my botched transplant
under the "Mission Success!" bloody text. 

Next week… another Steam Pack!