By Jim Drewes - July 12, 2005

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Basic Game Play

Legacy Interactive, makers of television drama-based video games such as Law and Order, and Law and Order: Criminal Intent, recently shipped ER, a PC game based on the television drama of the same name.  Undoubtedly, Legacy Interactive developed ER in an attempt to capitalize on the success of the ER franchise, and to provide a digital extension to the television series.  Die hard fans of the show will probably enjoy the PC video game, but most other gamers may find themselves a little disappointed.  Rather than following a strictly technical medical path, ER the game takes a cue from ER the television show in trying to follow the medical drama path.  Unfortunately, it is difficult to capture the essence of a medical drama in video game format, especially when the game play mimics the much slower-paced Sims style.

Medical video games can basically fall into one of two categories – diagnostic or dramatic.  Diagnostic games are represented by the old school Life and Death series, and the upcoming Trauma Center: Under the Knife title for the Nintendo DS.  These titles typically put you in more of an operating room roll, where you are required to actually diagnose patients and perform surgeries.  ER however, follows the dramatic route.  Dramatic medical games forsake diagnosis and concentrate more on patient and co-worker relationships, time management, and care coordination.  In ER you won’t find yourself trying to determine if your patient needs an appendectomy, and you won’t be using any defibrillators, but you find yourself working to clear a bed for a patient waiting in triage, and you will have to balance your time to make sure patient care doesn’t suffer.

Game play-wise, ER looks and feels very similar to The Sims, with a few RPG elements thrown in for good measure.  The game starts by customizing your character’s name, appearance, and skill levels – much like a standard role playing game.  Character customization pretty much ends there, however.  Skill levels will still be upgraded, but everything else about your character will remain fairly static.  Once the actual game play begins, you will be placed in County General Hospital’s emergency room, viewed in the same isometric fashion as The Sims.  Character movement is enabled with a simple point and click interface.  In fact, most functions of the game – speaking with characters, diagnosing patients, healing patients – use the point and click interface.  This takes the learning curve way down, and makes the game very easy to play.

You’ll spend a great deal of time plucking patients out of the triage waiting room, forming an initial diagnosis and then either sending the patient off for lab work, referring them to another ER doctor, or finding an open bed to place them in to await your expert medical treatment.  Diagnosis is basically as simple as clicking on the waiting patient.  After a few flailing arm moves from your character, an icon and a number will appear above the patient’s head.  These items indicate the type of treatment the patient is in need of (cardiology, toxicology, neurology, general surgery, pediatrics, and orthopedics), and to what degree their medical condition is.  At this point, your only diagnostic decision is to either send them to the lab, another doctor, or a bed.  Sending a patient to a bed places the responsibility for that patient in your hands.  Treating patients occurs in basically the same fashion.  Clicking on the patient will start your character waving his or her arms about to work on the patient.  The level of the medical condition will then either rise or fall, depending upon the skill level of your character, the level of injury to the patient, as well as some other factors.  Often, you will miraculously heal the patient, who will stand right up and walk out of the ER.

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