Surgeon Simulator is not for the squeamish. If you’ve ever played Operation and wished that it was a little bit more, well, bloody, then this is just the game for you.
Giving you all the tools of the trade and a willing patient to practice on, in the form of the unlucky Bob, you’d be forgiven in thinking this will be a case of steady hands and an attention to detail befitting any good surgeon.
But the ‘simulator’ in the title is a misnomer. The surgery on offer here is more akin to trying to eat jelly with a banana, there is very little chance of neat stitching here. It’s all deliberate, too. Like other games that delight in seeing you flounder, such as the infamous QWOP, the tools here are free to fly around in your grasp with only the bare minimum of control.
Pulling out organs relies on a drag and flick mechanism that would be more suitable for a child finding something entertaining in their nose, but makes for some interesting open heart surgery. Does your patient really need 2 kidneys? Not according to this game.
The sole factors in your success are placing relevant items in the right place after ripping everything out to get to them and stemming blood loss while keeping the heart rate below the point where a heart attack is on the cards. It’s frantic, messy fun, hardly training for any would-be surgeons and all the better for it.
Don’t expect to get past each level first time, though. The controls mean that there’s 
always going to be a moment where your saw gets stuck in an important body part or you’ll lose a much needed pair of scissors down the back of the operating table. With little in the way of pointers for completing your operation, bar the initial request, it seems like a steep learning curve at first, but the revelation once you find the right tool for the job or even how you use it is all part of the entertainment and while the game is fairly short once you finally get the hang of the controls, there’s always the chance to go back and improve your time.
The joy of Surgeon Simulator, then, is the exact opposite of what the title promises. It’s a messy disaster area of body parts and spurting blood and a game where watching someone else playing is just as fun as taking part.
8/10
