Beach Life

Format PC

Developer Deep Red

Publisher Eidos Interactive

Genre Sim / Strategy

Steve O'Hagan gets battered on strong lager, snogs a bush-pig and pukes all over the sun-lounger

"This is a game about behaving badly on holiday." The words of Ian Livingstone, living legend and the brains behind Beach Life, and a succinct summation of the antics you can expect in Eidos's new sun, sand and sangria simulator. Only we'd like to suggest a change to that statement. Try putting the word 'very' in front of badly.

Drunken bints in ill-fitting bikinis bitch-brawling outside tacky theme pubs. Men staggering out of night-clubs to brazenly urinate like horses up against the nearest burger stall. Men and women copping off for alcohol-fuelled romps in the sand dunes. Men and men copping off for alcohol-fuelled romps in the sand dunes. The gamut of debauchery laid bare. The entire spectrum of 'Brits on the Piss' loutishness unfolding on your monitor.

Think Theme Park set in Torremolinos. You are running a resort. There are beautiful sandy beaches. There are magnificent cliffs and rocky out-crops. Palm trees and Mediterranean flora cover the hills. But you've got a ferryload of 20-something holiday hedonists inbound, intent on having the time of their lives. Time to cover the beaches with sun-loungers and barbeques, wreck the cliffy vistas with hi-rise hotel blocks and bulldoze the vegetation to make way for discos, sweaty bars and over-priced restaurants.

BALEARIC BEATS
The game is broken into missions, and goals range from making a certain amount of cash, to cleaning up the reams of litter that are turning your resort into an ill-kept dustbin. Crucial to achieving any of this is keeping your fun-seekers happy while simultaneously relieving them of their money to fund your grand designs. Achieving the latter seems, on the face of it, not particularly difficult. Lower the price of beer a little, and watch them flock to your beach bar. Increase the strength of the stuff and watch them throng the convenience stores the next day, paying through the nose for headache pills.

Build cafes and beach barbeques to flog food throughout the day, and restaurants to keep the punters' bellies full during the night. Erect enormous superclubs to keep your visitors awake and spending money for as many hours as possible. Build discos on the beach or moor party yachts off the shore - you are not exactly short of ways of separating holidaymakers from their de niro.

ONCE MORE UNTO THE BEACH
Keeping them happy is another matter. From the cleanliness of the beach to the cleanliness of the babes sunbathing on it, there are plenty of factors to bear in mind. To keep tabs on your guests' moods, you need only click on any one of them to get a total breakdown on what makes them tick. From their name, to how drunk they are, to how full their bladder is, there's little you can't find out about these tiny, digitised holiday makers.

Different guests will have different priorities, though number one for most is nookie. A quick check on a visitor's totty meter shows whether they think that the place is heaving with classy crumpet, or whether it is crawling with boilers. To encourage more fellas in, you play to the lowest macho denominator by increasing the amount of jet skis there are to bugger about on, and the number of bars there are to get bladdered in. For the womenfolk, it's the likes of prime sunbathing space and top-notch swimming pools that will draw them in. Then, a swift reduction in the price of Cape Horn lager (an alcoholic aphrodisiac) and you can stand back and watch cupid do his work. And as ever, the act of love is a beautiful thing to behold.

Day is turning to night. The bars are thronging with revellers, now changed out of their bikinis and swimming shorts into even more indiscreet and revealing night-time clobber. The night grows long and conversations turn to flirting, and flirting turns to tongue-wrestling in the bushes and on the benches outside the boozer. Couples pair off and troop down to the dunes where they romp brazenly in the sand. It would be erotic but for the fact the girls are the size of the nail on your little finger.

"YOU SPILL MY PINT?"
Different kinds of beer produce different reactions in your guests. Fighting, flirting, having fun or just getting rat-arsed. Whatever you want your guests to feel, you can make it happen merely by changing the grog your bars are punting.

But the holiday makers aren't the only people you need to take care of, there's also your staff. The cleaners are pissed off because you've got them working through the night cleaning up piles of puke on minimum wage. Or your security guard's got the hump because you've dropped the price of fighting lager and he's the only one there to deal with the brawls breaking out. And with shark attacks, heat waves and hurricanes all a feature, taking care of your guest's obsessions is only half the battle.

So forget Ayia Napa, Ibiza and Rhodes, as this is going to make them seem like a wet weekend at Butlins. Beach Life offers the best of Mediterranean hedonism, minus Germans with towels.

Steve O'Hagan