Big Oil: Build an Oil Empire (PC)

GameSpot editors' review

• CNET editors' rating: 1.5 stars Poor
  Detailed editors' rating
  Overall score: 3.0 (1.5 stars)

• Reviewed by:
  Greg Mueller
• Reviewed on: 09/07/2006
• Released on: 07/31/2006
• Originally published on GameSpot: Big Oil: Build an Oil Empire (PC) Review

Crude oil is some nasty stuff even in virtual form, as evidenced by the ugly mess that is Big Oil: Build an Oil Empire, the latest economic strategy game from Tri Synergy. You might hope that a game that puts you in the role of an oil baron would attempt to capture the excitement of striking oil and making it big or negotiating high-stakes business contracts for mind-boggling sums of money around the world. Instead, Big Oil lends the sensation of trying to coax a sluggish tanker with an inebriated captain at the helm through an endless gauntlet of piercing icebergs. This game is slow, ugly, and poorly designed, and it isn't entertaining in the least.

Big Oil lets you build an oil empire by drilling for oil, shipping it to refineries around the world, and eventually processing it into products that you can sell to the public. You can choose from more than 15 scenarios based on historical events such as the World Wars or the Great Depression. Some of the scenarios are somewhat interesting, and they each have unique conditions for success. However, they all play about the same, which is to say, they all play poorly. You can also choose a freeplay campaign, where you start from scratch and build oil wells and refineries; research new technology to improve transportation and create new products; and develop cities to provide you with workers.

There are two difficulty modes to choose from: easy and advanced. If you choose easy mode, you'll have an annoying helper who pops up every few moments to tell you what's going on and offer to help you with tasks such as chartering ships to transport oil or purchasing drilling rights from cities around the world. This assistant can be helpful because it lets you avoid the headache of slogging through the poorly designed interface to manage your assets manually. However, the assistant is also annoying because when it pops up on the screen, the game stops, and the only answers you can give to its queries are "yes," "no," and "don't remind me again."

If you answer "yes," you'll be taken to the area in question, which is frustrating when you're in the middle of a task in a city on the other side of the world. If you answer "no," you'll have just a moment to finish what you're doing before being asked about some completely unrelated item of business. It doesn't help that the game comes riddled with glitches, which will cause your assistant to, for example, repeatedly ask if you want to build a kindergarten in Algiers, even if that city already has 10 kindergartens to every block. The worst thing you can do is respond to one of the assistant's requests with "don't remind me again." If you do this, you'll never get any such notices again, which means that you'll be uninformed about what's going on, and if you do want to do anything, you'll have to figure it out manually. This can be next to impossible given the game's lack of a tutorial and a severely lacking manual. Even if you look past the apparent design flaws with the forced automation method, playing Big Oil on easy comes down to clicking "yes" over and over to the pop-ups from your assistant and occasionally throwing down a new building or stretch of pipeline.

If you choose to play in advanced mode, you don't have an assistant at all. Instead, you're left to manually manage everything. Also, in advance mode, everything is far more complicated. For instance, constructing an oil well on easy mode is as simple as purchasing and placing a single building on an open oil field. In advanced mode, you have to purchase the oil well, staff it with workers, hire a specialist to manage the workers, maintain the various physical components of the well itself, and so on.

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