Review By:Michael Teplitsky
Published: August 10, 2005

Most of us visited an emergency room at one point of our lives. Some of us were injured; some went with a friend or a family member. The odds are, we were made to sit there for hours upon hours and when the doctor showed up he gave us little more than a glance and then ran off as if pursued by Serious Sam.

ER the Game is a piece of software that will allow us to set things right. It is based on the famous TV series, which I do not watch, so all the references (if any) were wasted on me, unfortunately. The good news is the fact that one does not need any previous exposure to the series in order to fit right in, although I imagine it would not hurt either. Another group that will feel right at home is the Sims players. ER uses an engine, which is very similar to that of Sims 2.

As the game starts, you get to create a doctor, who will be your avatar in the world of ER. The character creation is simple enough. There are 4 permanent character attributes, Intelligence, Constitution, Dexterity and Charm. These are picked once and then stay the same for the duration of the game. As I allocated points into each attribute, my learning abilities began to rise. There are six possible skills in which the character can advance. They are Neurosurgery, Toxicology, Pediatrics, Orthopedics, Cardiology and General Surgery. Later in the game as I gained experience I was able to raise my skills from 1 to the maximum possible of 10. Lastly I picked the face, the skin color, the uniform color and a few other colors along with my doctor’s gender and name. After a long and painful thinking process, I named him John Smith. Oh, the creative minds of game reviewers!

Following the creation there was a choice between starting the game and going through a tutorial first. I picked the tutorial and found myself on the hospital floor being greeted by one of the experienced doctors. The doc did a very good job at showing me around, teaching me to use the interface and overall making me comfortable lurking around the ER. It made me feel like I could really handle the job. After successfully graduating from the tutorial, I was ready to begin the game proper.

As opposed to the continuous gameplay of the Sims, ER is broken down into episodes of which there are 7. An episode, which is a doctor’s work shift, lasts a number of hours during which he must take care of the patients, socialize with coworkers, maintain himself and complete assignments, which are given to him from time to time by his superiors.

New patients keep arriving into the waiting room and it is doctors’ job to approach and diagnose them. The diagnosis will reveal the type and the severity of injury and the patient’s aura will change from grey to green, yellow or red. Some patients are impossible to diagnose so they must be sent to a lab for tests. Once a person is diagnosed they can be directed to a bed. Different rooms are meant to house patients with different severity of their injuries. Usually that works out fine, but sometimes it gets overcrowded and a patient has to be put in a room where he does not belong. After a patient is in bed, the doctor can come and begin treatment. Depending on the doctor’s skills the treatment improves the patient’s condition or worsens it.