Hotel Giant 2 Review

When we received this game in the post, I took one glance at it and said "I'm going to review this game now," and before anyone said anything else there I was unwrapping the packaging and starting to install the game. As the computer screen said ‘installing' I gazed, as the screenshots came on, in awe.

My first impression of the game was that it was very similar to ‘The Sims' and ‘Sim City', which, of course, I grew more and more wound up about, because as most of the people who me, know that I love ‘The Sims'. This game is the sequel of the well-known and very successful game, ‘Hotel Giant'. The gameplay of ‘Hotel Giant 2' is very similar to its prequel, although modified, so it is still best to go through with the tutorial. Before I start I want to say that this is one of the first games which I have reviewed where I didn't have to use the manual as much. I only had to use it to check if there was any information I had missed or forgotten, therefore showing that the game tells you most of the information anyway, and has a very detailed, easy-to-follow tutorial.

Basically, the aim of the game is to create the best hotel there can be, and suit it to the satisfaction of your customers. Altogether there are twenty-six destinations at which the hotels can be located at, for example Paris, Los Angeles, Rome plus many more! Furthermore, there are more than fourteen-hundred items that can be used to decorate all the rooms in your hotel; moreover, there are specific items for each room. For example, in the guestrooms you can put in a bed, which you cannot put in the any of the other rooms, you can follow the customers throughout their stay and watch their every move.

On the main screen there are eight options to choose from, the most worthy of note are Campaign, Random Game and Sandbox Hotels. In the first option, Campaign, you have a further three options to choose from. One is the Learning Campaign, which is the tutorial. It is very helpful and basic which in turn, makes it easy to use through step by step instructions, and occasionally, if you need to know how do a certain action, then it waits until you have done that particular action until it carries on with the tutorial. On a downside to the tutorial, I found it very hard to find it in the menu system as Campaign mode was the last place I looked, as that is normally where you start all the serious business. The second option is ‘Hotel Giant' Campaign, which is for those players who have finished the tutorial and have gained experience with the gameplay, or want a more challenging task. There are fifteen different scenarios in the ‘Hotel Giant' Campaign, which all increase in difficulty as the player gradually moves through the game.

The third choice is the Random Campaign, where you have a series of scenarios based on the difficulty you choose. The second option (on the main menu), is 'Random Game', in which you play a hotel based on the difficulty and gameplay you have set it as. The different parameters that you can set are: the difficulty of the gameplay - how hard you set the game also changes the amount of starting money and the complexity of the goals; the number cities you have got a hotel in at any onetime; the choice of cities to have hotel in; the time limit given to reach your goals; whether your hotel is pre-built or not; and there is also a button which can randomise all the settings. The third option on the main menu is Sandbox Hotels, where you can choose between three different fully-furnished hotels to investigate, merely exploring them to see what a fully-furnished hotel would look like. You cannot modify the objects in the rooms, or the rooms in the hotel themselves.

When you are making, editing and deleting your hotel, you can view one floor in three different perspectives: isometric view, perspective view and bird's eye view. You can also take photos and videos of the inside and outside of your hotel, and view them in a gallery. When you are on Random Game, you can buy spare land and therefore you can buy a new hotel to create.

Unfortunately you cannot create the shape of the hotel; you have to choose from a selection that the game offers to you. When you edit your hotel you can also close the hotel, so that guests do not get in the way, and when you are finished with your work, you press the button to re-open your hotel. Whilst in-game, you have a button which can take you to the ‘Information Screen', where it shows you all of your stats in the game so far. In your game you can offer packages for your customers, like discount on foods, half the price for guest rooms, or maybe one or a few days having free access to activities, like the spa or the computer room.

On the ‘Information Screen' is the option to start advertising campaigns on the web, newspapers, magazines, on the radio, and on the television. Allegedly there are also ‘Strategy Tips' in the game, entering a pop-up window going through all the tips to help you in the game. Lastly, the star class of your hotel is very important, as the more stars you get the more customers come in. The star rating of your hotel depends on the ‘Required Average Staff Service Quality Level', and the ‘Required Overall Customer Satisfaction %'. The better the staff's service quality, plus the more you satisfy your customers, and the more stars you get for your hotel, equals you attracting more customers. For example, to get a 0.5 rating of your hotel you will have the Required Overall Customer Satisfaction Percentage of fifteen to twenty-nine percent and the Required Average Staff Service Quality Level as zero.

As you have probably gathered, this game is all about the customers. How successful you are in the game is dependant on how well you treat your customers, and if you treat them poorly then the game becomes quite challenging to sort out. If you click on a certain customer you can view their needs, complaints, what activities they enjoy the most, and even activate what they call a ‘Cheat Card'. What you can do with these ‘Cheat Cards' is make a guest do any activity of your choosing. You start off with thirty of these cards, and after a week of running your hotel (not real-time), you are given an extra card to use. You select what activity you want your customer to do using the drop-down menu and you can press the clear button when you want that guest to stop that certain activity. Once you achieve 100 % customer satisfaction, you have a message box displayed. Through this you can attract other guests to visit, as well as unlocking a special reward item.

As you all know, a hotel isn't a hotel without its rooms and objects, so obviously you can add, move and delete rooms and objects. You can resize rooms, and place rooms in rooms. For example, you would place a bathroom in a bedroom, or a kitchen in a restaurant. If you add an item or change something in a room, potentially the rooms with the same layout can have this change repeated in all of the rooms. It can be done for resizing rooms too, if they have enough room to move about. This makes things a great deal easier, as it saves you time by not doing exactly the same change to many rooms. In your hotel you can also create many different rooms for all different activities, such as a restaurant, a coffee shop, a bar, a health club, a business centre, a games room, an indoor swimming pool and a library, to name but a few.

Sometimes you can have troubles creating a new layout for a room. This may be caused by there not being enough room, it is on an existing object, or if you don't have enough money to put a new room down. You can make six different rooms, depending on the required satisfaction of the room, the required size for the room, if there is a sub-room needed, and what type of bed is needed in the room. The possible rooms that can be made are ranked from Economy to the most luxurious grade of them all: Presidential Suite. The details of the items are very technical and very precise. For example, you can choose which screen size you want for the television when you put it in a room. Also, when you open, lets say a restaurant, you can choose what type of menu you want, and what goes into the menu. When you put down an object, other than paying for the actual cost to put it down, you also have to pay a monthly fee to maintain it.

Another point worth mentioning is that at the different locations you go to, say a hotel in Los Angeles, sofas are different to the sofas you can choose from in Paris. This can be quite annoying because, most of, lets take sofas again, in Paris are rubbish compared to the ones in Los Angeles. Things you can make outside are: a swimming pool, with other items; parks, with paths and other objects for the park and you can even add a rock-climbing wall.

In conclusion, I personally love this game, and it is perfect for those that like simulation games like ‘The Sims', ‘Sim City' or ‘Hotel Giant' - the prequel of this game. ‘Hotel Giant 2' has brilliant real-life like graphics, whilst paying attention to a lot of detail.