Computer Gaming World: Vegas Tycoon

Bugsy Siegel drove out to the Nevada desert and saw the opportunity to make millions. Of course, six months after he opened the Flamingo hotel, his “associates” found his business acumen lacking and shot him dead. Such a fate is unlikely to befall you in Vegas Tycoon. Here, you’re a member of the new guard of developers who exchanged baseball bats and brass knuckles for spreadsheets and market analysis as Vegas’ predominant business tools. As such, while you’ll sell your share of sin in Vegas Tycoon, you’ll spend just as much time installing family-friendly attractions such as roller coasters and theme rides.

Campaign mode presents a set of tasks for you to complete before your computer-controlled opponents do. For each scenario, you design a complex that caters to the needs of a predetermined clientele, building appropriate entertainment options and controlling prices to keep a steady stream of customers entering your venues. Sandbox mode provides open-ended play—rather than having to cater to a predetermined group, you create an empire that will attract the customers you want.

The wages of sin is a new roller coaster

In both modes, you can build everything from aquariums to wedding chapels to adult clubs, allowing you to make something that looks like Disneyland or something that looks like Times Square circa 1975. However, you can only design the interiors of the casinos themselves. You’ll choose what types of table games and slot machines to install, what the betting limits will be, and how big of a house edge your games will have. What you install in your casino will determine whether you attract high rollers or a busload of blue-haired grandmas. But choose wisely, because once you place something down, it can’t be moved. Want to add another moneymaking blackjack table but you’re short on space? Forget about moving that trash can, it’s there to stay.

While the over-the-top architecture of your buildings mirrors the look of modern-day Vegas, for gameplay purposes, some casino operations lack realism. For instance, mechanics are constantly fixing broken blackjack tables, slot machine limits seem unnaturally high, and the house can set an advantage for itself in poker games.

Building your empire is relatively easy, but keeping it running is a bigger challenge. Cleaners, mechanics, and electricians regularly need to be sent to work on what you have built, and everything that breaks down must be individually selected for repair, so if you have a bank of 60 slot machines, you must individually select each one that needs to be fixed. A hotkey option would have made this sometimes arduous task somewhat simpler. In addition to daily wear and tear, a host of disasters awaits your creation. In this case, God shows his displeasure by blasting your temples of sin with an Old Testament mix of dust storms, rats, and lightning strikes.

The game’s highly detailed environments may lead you to spend hours just wandering around your creation at street level, but with so many buildings at your disposal, you’ll also put in plenty of time trying to move from small-time player to entertainment kingpin. The makers of the well-received Monopoly Tycoon have created an entertaining sim—Vegas Tycoon gets the look and feel of Sin City just right.

Verdict 3.5/5 Stars

An amusing sim from the makers of Monopoly Tycoon.