Comedy beauty hospital game

Hurrah for the comedy hospital management sub-sub-genre and its talent for distilling the altruism of our nations' brightest sons and daughters and the pain and suffering of their charges into comically-named diseases and cheap laughs about bed-pans. If there's one area of society that's plainly ripe for lampooning it's the people we rely on to stop us dying. (We're just kidding of course. One of the wonderful things about people who work in the health service is their ability to laugh about it.)

Anyway, hot on the heels of ER - The Game (a lacklustre management game that allows you to snog recognisable characters between surgeries) and not-so-hot on the heels of Theme Hospital comes German outfit Independent Arts' Rich & Beautiful - a game that gives you control of a "beauty hospital".

According to German publisher dtp, it features "a full life and hospital simulation with slight erotic elements". Where to start? A full life simulation? Really? Ignoring that, why does a beauty hospital game have to have erotic elements? What's erotic about having your tits cut open and lumps of gel shoved inside them, or having white goop siphoned out of your arse?

"The player takes the role of a chief doctor of a beauty hospital, builds up the hospital, enlarges his income, flirts with the nurses, goes golfing etc." Eh? Oh well, we probably shouldn't pay it too much mind. It's due out next autumn, so there'll be plenty of time to feign indignation over the next year or so.