Reviews / previews
During my second year in college, I decided I wanted
to be a doctor. I imagined myself in perilous
situations, making life-and-death decisions for people
entrusted to my care.
Then I found out how much medical school costs, and
I decided to stick to playing games.
But I may not have to abandon my dreams. Not
totally, anyway. Legacy Interactive has published a
$30 alternative to six years of cadaver-carving and
$100,000 tuition. It's called Emergency Room 2, and
while simple enough to play right out of the box, it's
intricate enough to hold my attention for hours at a
time.
As a medical
student at Legacy
Memorial Hospital,
you'll treat
everything from
scrapes to infant
drownings. Your
shift begins when
you pick a patient in
the Waiting Room
and use your
handheld computer
(the Medomatic) to record his or her complaint. (A
good doctor needs to be a good listener.)
Then it's on to the Exam Room, where you'll have a
look at the injury for yourself and receive points for
accurately examining the correct areas--watch where
you stick that stethoscope, pal--and lose them if you
make mistakes.
Next, you'll have to decide whether to order lab tests
or X-rays. And, finally, you'll administer treatment
before the Head Doctor evaluates your
performance.
I've never enjoyed QuickTime games, but
this one kept me hooked. OK, the badly
acted FMV sequences don't have the
smoothest transitions and the injuries look
fake. But as I got deeper into the game, I
found myself curiously intent on suturing the
wound of the girl who stepped on glass, and
reviving that baby pulled from the bathtub.
Granted, this may have as much to do with me as with the game. But ER2's
mistakes didn't get in the way.
Beyond that, it's hard to get lost in ER2. The Head Nurse and Head Doctor
(contacted via the Medomatic) can often direct you to the next step, and
descriptions are provided for every tool, diagnosis, and condition. And it's got
a nice heft to it. In addition to the 100 cases
in the game, new ones will be available for
download at the Legacy web site.
Now, you should have a healthy interest in
the medical sciences before this you take
the plunge. But if you fill that bill, you'll find
ER2 gives doctor-wannabes a
scratch-the-surface education in the life of a
medical professional.
It's almost enough to make me think twice about applying to medical school.-- Danny Lam / GamePro
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