by Jason Longster

Created on: October 15, 2008   Last Updated: October 21, 2008

Rusty Axe's Big Shot is a business tycoon style game where the goal is to be wealthiest entrepreneur in town. You start off with a discount business or with just your cash if you prefer a challenge, and you invest your money into your store in order to increase your net value. As the economy changes so do your profits and your bills. As you progress through the months you will get the chance to bid on foreclosing businesses in auctions, acquire new businesses that are for sale, and make deals with other business owners all to succeed and become the Big Shot.

If you're a fan of economics and business then Big Shot is your kind of game. This top-down Monopoly style game incorporates earnings, expenses, mortgages, loans, auctions, sales, deals, and a fluctuating economic market in order to simulate entrepreneurship without the headaches of actually dealing with staff and clients. With a variety of different business ventures you may find yourself running a chain of fast food restaurants, operating retail centres, or owning high class housing in the middle of downtown. Not only will you find Big Shot a fun and challenging simulator but the computer opponents act and react to the market while you play, adding to the realism of the game.

For gamers who are looking for a straight-forward number crunching money making Sim this is a good title. Don't expect to be impressed with the graphics of the game as most of the game play is turn-based and requires no animation. Frames and scenes are static for the most part and the audio accompanies it appropriately. The audio and visual are nothing to write home about and the simple mouse clicking game play can leave the player under-stimulated to say the least. Each month lends itself to a flurry of happenings as you pay off your bills, upgrade your businesses, and partake in auctions and deals; however, you don't always know if you should wait out a month or just skip over to the next to get through the game quicker. The tutorial system works well enough, although the demo had problems at certain points through the game play.

Due to a lack of audio, visual, and game play excitement Rusty Axe's Big Shot deserves a 2/5. It has everything an entrepreneur could ask for in a business Sim including the staleness of accounting. The demo only lent itself to an easy difficulty and to a 12 month period while the full version has a medium and hard difficulty as well as 5 years to 36 years for a long-term investor-style game. If you're looking for a comfortably paced economics Sim then see if you have what it takes to become the Big Shot.

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