Beach Life (PC)

...bars, clubs, restaurants, cafes, and beach equipment for leisure such as pedaloes and jet ski higher. Many of these have been taken into account to help build your island. You can also place scenery, and lights, as it does get dark. You can place fountains and benches, along with paths and grass. The weather can change from boiling hot sunshine to wet rain with thunder and lightning. Different islands vary in size.

Guests usually come ...
...friends and post on the beach life website. I have not used this yet, as it gets a five star from me without it.

Also on the title bar is a built in MP3 player, with some great banging tunes. You can skip any of these using the MP3 player if it is giving you a headache, but I usually let the songs play, as they develop into different types of songs to go with the time of day. I am happy with listening to their guests and the building ... more

Why is it that a game better than any other of its type is fairly unknown?

It may be to do with the fact that it is quite hard to get hold of, or that people do not realise how good this game really is. I came across it by accident, and at present, cannot really put it down. This game is known as "Beach Life".

I was searching for a game I had played a few years ago known as "Holiday Island". This game is great, but also hard to get hold of. On my search I cam across "Beach Life" as it said how you could build your own holiday island. I love games like this. These include; "The Sims", "Theme Hospital", "Theme Park", "Rollercoaster Tycoon", "The Settlers" and the list just goes on. I decided to purchase "Beach Life" over the internet and as a result knew little about it until I received it.

>>>> Packaging <<<<

It is a fairly modern game by Eidos and comes in a DVD style case with a woman in her bikini on the front with the title, on a sky blue background. The box gives the impression that it is a top quality game, and I certainly think it is.

>>>> Idea <<<<

The idea of the game is to build your own holiday island and you achieve more by going through the scenarios which is the main part of the game. You can also create your own level without any objectives which is known as sandbox mode. However, you can only choose from an island which you have unlocked by going through the scenarios. You need to make money and keep your guests happy, bringing in as many guests as you can, and the scenarios ask you to do different things. These include; to make a certain amount of money by a certain time, make people think your island is safe, attractive and you even have to get the totty level up. On one of the scenarios, I have even had to get men and women together by serving up horny drinks so that they will have a roll around on the beach, will let you work out what they are up too!

>>>> Game Play <<<<

Once you get into the game, it is pretty easy to play. However, this does not mean you will have completed it in a couple of hours, as many of the scenarios have taken me up to 8 attempts, and they do get harder as you progress further on. I think this is how a game should be, making it more enjoyable, although I do get frustrated when I have not got as much money coming in as I need to build more etc.

Everything is required in the game making it feel more realistic, You need builders, a power plant, cleaners, security guards, mechanics, lifeguards which are all useful in maintaining your own holiday island. Other items are available such as a general store, toilets, bars, snack bars, clubs, restaurants, cafes, and beach equipment for leisure such as pedaloes and jet ski higher. Many of these have been taken into account to help build your island. You can also place scenery, and lights, as it does get dark. You can place fountains and benches, along with paths and grass. The weather can change from boiling hot sunshine to wet rain with thunder and lightning. Different islands vary in size.

Guests usually come to your island by a ferry and in the title bar down the bottom of your screen you can see when the next one is due, along with a rating of your resort up to 5 star. You also can see how much power is needed and how much is generated on your island. There are also areas where you can click to build things such as your staffing levels, etc. You can zoom in and out of your island, and control the speed of time going by.

Time moves on in 15 mins of their time, and this can be speeded up on controls 1, 2 and 3, so if not much was happening between 4.00 a.m. and 7.a.m. on the game, you can speed up time. The workers you employ on the island have shifts which you can alter, and when you place a building, you need to wait for the builders to build it up. Mechanics are needed as building can become poorly maintained and even dangerous. You can close the beaches if sharks are coming by using the lifeguard tower. You can place bins, but you still need cleaners to empty them, sweep up the rubbish which has not been placed in a bin, and to clean the toilets. Security guards can impose fines on the holiday makers, and you can increase the strength of drinks sold at a particular place.

One of my favourite parts is clicking onto a guest. It tells you their needs, and a bit about them such as how drunk they are and how sunburnt they have got, (the sunburnt ones are the really orange ones, but they can buy suntan lotion form the general store). However, I like reading their thoughts, if they need the toilet, they will say, and are not necessarily polite about it. They can have some real horny thoughts too. I find it really funny watching the different characters dance away on the dancefloor, this is worth watching itself! I have not mentioned everything, but hope I have given an insight into how you play the game. I think it all works very well.

As usual you can save, reset and load the game from where you left. The graphics are excellent, but if you do zoom in the closest it can be a bit blocky, but it is usually not needed, as you need to keep your eye out for everything.

>>>> Camera and MP3 player <<<<

There is a feature which is on the title bar where you can take a photograph of your island. I have not used this yet, but the idea is that you can take a picture of your guests and island which you can e-mail to your friends and post on the beach life website. I have not used this yet, as it gets a five star from me without it.

Also on the title bar is a built in MP3 player, with some great banging tunes. You can skip any of these using the MP3 player if it is giving you a headache, but I usually let the songs play, as they develop into different types of songs to go with the time of day. I am happy with listening to their guests and the building work going on etc.

>>>> Price <<<<

As I have said, this game is quite hard to come by and is not that cheap. Tesco.com do not have it in stock, but the RRP is £24.99. You can buy a copy from the amazon marketplace (www.amazon.co.uk) for roughly between £15 - £20 plus £1.99 p&p, which I think is very good value for such a great game. I do enjoy games like this, and this is my all time favourite at present.

>>>> Other Details <<<<

I only have a PC which came with windows 98, and was bought that year, as a result I do not have much space on my PC. I had to uninstall a few things in order to install this game as it needs at least:

950MB of free hard disk space
4X CD ROM Drive
Windows 98/2000/XP
PII 450MHZ or equivalent
DirectX 8.1 Compatible Graphics Card
DirectX 8.1 Compatible Sound Card
Keyboard/Mouse

>>>> Merv’s Final Thought <<<<

This game is excellent and seems to take everything into account for you to build your own party island. If you like the games where you build things yourself, you will love this game. It deserves a massive 110% from me!

© merv83 2003.
 

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