Articles - Beach Life - "The Beach Life" Game Review

"The 'Ibiza Sim' for the older teen generation. Quirky graphics and micro-management aspects coupled with scenarios and sandbox makes for one of the better 'sim' games"

Summer's gone and well, lets face it, your holiday romance isn't going to call. But that's no reason to be downhearted - Introducing Beach Life! The tropical playground sim. Where you can recreate your Ibiza experience with late night discos, wet t-shirt competitions, drunken brawls and one night stands.

True, there are more sim games than British teens on a low-cost flight to Magaluf. And you'd probably be right if you said most were as about exciting as a pint of larger and a bag of chips. But here is a title that will remain one of the classics.

Scenario play is fair and with 12 islands to develop, each growing progressively harder, you can play this one for a while. But that's probably one of the games downsides, some of the later scenarios are pretty demanding and if you don't complete the scenario in the allotted time you loose your little haven (not to mention all the time you spent creating it) and have to begin again. There is a sandbox feature but you can only play sandbox on the islands that you have completed in scenario mode.

That aside Beach Life deserves to be played. And the likelihood is that you will enjoy playing it because you can relate to it. It's full of little quirks such as the illusive shark attacks, cat fights and a good 300Megs of micro-animation. Also, Eidos have called in the likes of Kinobe, Alexkid and others for a game soundtrack that you'll probably recognise and bob along to as you play.

In comparison with other holiday sims, Beach life is the best of them all. For those of you who played "holiday island", this has none of the dinky childlike game play. Beach Life is in your face, you can see the people, plop down the bars, and for the perfectionists among you, control everything from the landscaping to the pavement lighting and harshness of the security guards.

Its a grown-up sim that'll be played by all and hated by many. And even if you hate sim games and somebody forced you to read this then consider the game for its *ahem* stunning graphics… just look at the box and you'll understand.