Ultimate Theater Simulator Review (PC)

At fifteen, I found myself at a fork in the road. I had a choice to make: join Dad as an undertaker (true story) or submit an application for a local movie theater. In the end, I neglected the latter, not because it didn’t pay well, but because I had learned of all the teething issues that often plagued the former. I spoke with a friend who, to my bewilderment, told me that the job was like a toddler with a knack for troublemaking. It came to me that, while the position had its perks, the bulk of it was either caked in incompetent co-workers, broken soda machines, irritatingly tight-fisted guests, or shoddy projectors. I became an undertaker, and I never looked back. That is, until I found Ultimate Theater Simulator, at which point that same toddler popped up to regurgitate the same problems. Deja vu, I guess.

True to the point of job simulation games, Ultimate Theater Simulator does indeed have its perks and limitations. Much like your traditional business affair with steady progression tropes and an incentivized tier system, it coerces you into doing more or less the same things—serving customers, fixing equipment, and dealing with customer complaints and what have you—while simultaneously promising you that, if you do enough of these things, a lavish entrepreneurial experience will eventually come knocking. And to be fair, it does make the latter stages of the job feel easier and more incentivized. It’s what it wedges between you and the final curtain, that’s the problem.

Screening Time

If you have worked in a movie theater before, then you ought to know that nothing ever goes according to plan. In Ultimate Theater Simulator, specifically, the problems don’t necessarily arise from the broken soda dispensers; they sprout from the incompetent AI and the zero tolerance system that controls the flow of the business. Colleagues, in general, are idiotic and slow even during the best of times. Customers, too, are about as useful as a wet napkin, and are sworn to the notion that their tickets are valid even when they’re not. And, almost as if to add the icing on the cake, the frequent systematic failures make it so that earning money and developing the business is but a mere pipe dream that will never come to fruition. Like I said, ordinary occurrences in the theater fold. At least Ultimate Theater Simulator boasts authenticity, then.

Ultimate Theater Simulator isn’t all doom and gloom, mind you. Oh, contrary to popular belief, the theater does have some pleasant surprises, and believe it or not, they do come in the form of joyful nuggets that feel incredibly rewarding to unlock. The process of earning said nuggets is a little drawn out and dull at times I’ll admit, but it’s the brief moments of pride that come with accomplishing things — a well-oiled team, being the most important.

The game itself unfolds like a lot of business games: a husk of a theater opens the floodgates for all sorts of possible upgrades and synergies, and tasks you with pulling the necessary strings to help it thrive. With that, you can more or less expect a lot of the same basic ingredients: tweaking broken machines, selling tickets to impatient customers, and doing all in your power not to pull your hair out over the ridiculously incompetent people who work for you. That’s a task unto itself, and frankly, one that needs its own little section.

Silver Lining on the Silver Screen

The good news: Ultimate Theater Simulator is flush with fantastic customization options. Aside from the general husk that you start your career with, there are also several separates theaters that you can open and operate, and a surprisingly weighty collection of ways to boost its appearance. The point is, if you enjoy taking the time to finesse the formula and adding all of the juicy embellishments to a building, then you won’t find a shortage of items and set pieces to work with here. That’s the best bit, truly: the freedom that comes with opening and maintaining a theater.

The bad news is that, despite their being a ton of great hot fixes to iron over some of the game’s grittier details, there are several issues that make the process of working in a theater a bit of a pain in the backside. For example, customers often freeze in place during the checkout phase; staff often fail to carry out their duties; tickets are often null and void for no reason whatsoever; and guests, annoyingly, have an awful habit of destroying your building wherever possible. To that end, you could say that it’s all rather chaotic. Personally, I’d say that it’s an authentic experience, right down to the useless staff members.

Despite there being a slew of bugs and technical hitches, Ultimate Theater Simulator does have some great bones to it. What’s more, it gives you a lot to do en route to the final business milestone, be it a fresh wing to decorate, another machine to install, or a new web of colleagues to train and implement in your quarters. And to be honest, it’s a lot to fun to unravel, even though, in all honesty, it doesn’t look that great from the outside looking in. But that’s a business sim for you, in a nutshell: oddly amusing, yet lacking in any form or graphical and technical grace. Yet, there’s plenty of potential for it to blossom and shine in the near future — even on the smaller screen.

Verdict

Technical faults cast aside, I do believe that Ultimate Theater Simulator has some fantastic qualities to it. Of course, it’s still in its teething period, and so, a few minor bugs and audiovisual faults are to be expected every once in a blue moon. But, what’s important is that, so long as the developers keep to a strict routine of ironing over the remaining creases, the final result will eventually come to shine as a feature-length marvel and not, for example, a box office flop. And it has that potential, too.

While there’s no denying that business simulation games are among one of the most forgettable of their kind, I will argue that Ultimate Theater Simulator deserves the benefit of the doubt in this case. It’s still a few clips short of a whole reel, but for what you get under the ticket stub price, I will say that you will most definitely get your money’s worth here.

To echo, if you love a good old-fashioned business sim that leans on all of the annoyingly lovable gameplay mechanics of a traditional sim à la Supermarket Simulator, then you should consider dipping your hands into the popcorn bucket and dabbling in the cinematic universe for yourself. It isn’t buttery smooth, but sweet and salty ought to suffice in this case, if you catch my drift.