The latest game in the long line of Tycoon simulation experiences has just been christened for mass consumption.  This time the focus is on Las Vegas.  The same development team behind the critically praised Monopoly Tycoon is responsible for this casino-building simulator.  Vegas Tycoon is a casino-building simulator that puts the player in charge of everything from the nearby restaurants, nightclubs, and roller coasters to the casino’s own plants, lights, and bathrooms.  This means that customization and micromanagement is at an all-time high, but this also means that those who are overwhelmed by such things may find the learning curve too frustrating to appreciate all that this game has to offer.

Vegas Tycoon is basically split up into two distinctive modes of play.  The first is obviously the casino-building elements.  The other is the resort-management aspects.  If you’re going into this game with the intention of focusing solely on casinos then you should reevaluate your expectations.  The real-life Las Vegas has been about much more than gambling for quite some time, and the transformation that Vegas has gone through in the past 20 years is admirably recreated here.  You’ll be charged with developing a world-class resort, complete with gift shops, stage shows, magic acts, movie theatres, and upscale luxury hotels.

With your casino sitting at the center of your resort as its main attraction and money maker, you’ll be encouraged to deck the place out with the most popular gambling games and amenities that money can buy.  This will in turn encourage the people who visit your casino to check out the rest of your resort.  Likewise, the more people you can get to visit the resort, the higher the chances that a percentage of those people will lose their money in your casino.  The resort/casino equation that is in full effect here works great, as both facets of the game interact with each other seamlessly.

If you’re the kind of simulation fan that really gets off on having a wealth of creation options at your disposal you’ll be glad to know that Vegas Tycoon does not skimp in this regard.  Nearly every Las Vegas amenity you can think of is featured, such as aquatic attractions, jewelry stores, musical shows, firework displays, and many others.  There is also a healthy dose of scalability in plenty of the attractions that you can place in your resort, meaning that once you accrue enough dough you can upgrade your established attractions without having to rebuild from scratch.  The sheer number of variables that you can keep your mind busy with in Vegas Tycoon is daunting.  You can adjust everything from a concert’s musical act, to each individual game’s betting limits and house rules.

But as any casino owner knows, all the attractions and slot machines in the world won’t get you anywhere if you don’t have the people around to spend their money on’em.  Luckily, Vegas Tycoon comes correct with thousands of roaming tourists represented on-screen at any given moment.  They’re not all tourists, of course, a small percentage of the people you’ll see walking along the Vegas strip and wandering around in your resort are also business men, VIPs, celebrities, and big-time spenders.  Also, the decisions that you make in building your resort and casino have an affect on what types of visitors frequent your establishments.  Tourists will occasionally partake in a game of keno or poker, but the real money is in attracting business men and celebrities.  And in order to do that you’ll need to make sure you have plenty of nightclubs and showgirl attractions.

The actual design process of the game is the most time-consuming element of the experience.  You begin by buying a lot on which to build your resort.  Paying attention to the placement of everything is of the utmost importance to building a successful business.  Every item and object you place within the interior of your establishments are weighed against sound, smell, sight, and comfort, and the only way to really understand the most efficient manner of placement is through common logic and trial-and-error.  At first many players will be frustrated that their resort isn’t raking in as much cash as they think it should, but by fine tuning the environments to the aforementioned variables you’ll almost instantly see a bigger profit margin on your bottom line. 

Luckily, the interface in Vegas Tycoon is pretty intuitive and easy to understand, which makes the required micromanagement aspects of the experience a lot simpler than it could have been.  Playing for long durations of time will expose the interface’s niggling flaws, however.  For example, there is no undo feature, and since you can’t really tell how efficient the placement of an object will be until you’ve placed it, this can be a bit frustrating.  It will take quite a bit of time to memorize all the intricate nuances of the system, and most players should expect more than a few failed resorts before finally getting it right. 

Visually, Vegas Tycoon is a great looking game that sports some very detailed graphics.  The Las Vegas that we’ve all seen in pictures or first-hand is beautifully recreated here.  Even the thousands of visitors that flood the Vegas strip are graphically accounted for.  There are 10 included resort themes to play around with, and each one has a very unique look to it.  The various buildings that you’ll get to play around with are meticulously detailed and even the architectural style of them manage to seem ripped right out of reality.  The high-res character and object models that the game utilizes to purport a believable environment are definitely the game’s visual highpoint.  The sound presentation benefited from quite a bit of attention to detail as well.  The aural ambiance in any of the game’s on-screen areas is perfectly representative of what you’d expect to hear in the real deal.  Sound effects are spot-on, and there are tons of them.

Overall, Vegas Tycoon is everything you could expect from a Las Vegas resort and casino building simulator.  The barrage of options available and innumerable environmental variables that affect your success take quite a bit of time to get used to, but if you’re looking for a deep, entertaining strategy game then Vegas Tycoon is certainly worth checking out. 

 Gameplay: 8.2

The interface is adequately streamlined and user-friendly, but the sheer number of customization options at your disposal may be somewhat overwhelming initially.
 

Graphics: 8.7
The entire graphical presentation of Vegas Tycoon is top-shelf, you’ll swear you’re looking at the real deal, almost.
 

Sound: 8.6

The aural additions to Vegas Tycoon go a long way to reinforce the illusion that you really are in Vegas, the developers did a great job in this department.
 

Difficulty: Hard

If you can get over the initial learning curve, which takes quite a bit of time, succeeding at building a resort and casino is quite do-able.
 

Concept: 8.7
For anyone who has visited or wants to visit Vegas, this game does a great job of showing you the internal workings of the place.  A great idea and a pretty darn good game.
 

Overall: 8.2

More complicated than SimCity but loads more satisfying once you get the hang of it.