Publisher: Legacy Interactive
Developer: Glyphic Entertainment
System requirements: Windows XP/Vista/Win 7; 1.5 GHz Pentium IV or equivalent CPU; 1 GB RAM; 128 MB graphics card
Genre: Puzzle
ESRB rating: Teen
Release date: Available now

Games based on movies have always met with almost universal critical panning, a fate shared by TV show adaptations. Aside from a plethora of cartoon series games, those based on live-action shows such as the CSI and Law and Order series have not fared well in the gaming world. Undaunted by the trends of the past, publisher Legacy Interactive and developer Glyphic Entertainment offer House, MD, giving you the opportunity to visit the world of one of television’s most reviled, yet adored, characters.

Since 2004, the abrasive, brilliant medical diagnostician Dr. Gregory House has limped through the corridors of New Jersey’s fictional Princeton-Plainsboro teaching hospital. Backed by a team of young physicians, Dr. House solves cases of medical mystery in unconventional ways, while making life miserable for his co-workers and his one and only friend, oncologist Dr. James Wilson. In House, MD, you follow House and his team as they diagnose and treat five widely varied cases.

Glyphic gives you the complete House experience in House, MD. A brief scene introduces the characters and the case. You examine the patient and ask pertinent questions, join House and his team as they spitball diagnoses until one sticks, take blood and tissue samples from the patient, perform lab tests on the samples, question the patient’s friends and colleagues, and search the patient’s home and workplace for evidence to support the diagnosis. You also follow House into the hospital’s clinic (he’s required to see regular patients as a condition of his employment), where he deals with more mundane medical situations.

House, MD looks and plays very much like a point-and-click adventure game, with static scenes and no spoken dialogue. Conversations with patients are conducted using menus in which you select a question from a list of three options. The bulk of the gameplay is made up of minigames that you play to complete tasks such as conducting lab tests and searching for clues. After certain tasks are finished, either House or Wilson give you a letter grade for your performance, and you get a final grade for each case after it’s solved. The five cases must be played in a certain order the first time, but you can go back and try for a better score if you wish. Expect to spend an hour or so on each case, although a button on the bottom of the screen allows you to skip material such as dialogue between doctors and patients.

House, MD, much like its main character, is a mess. Graphics are low-res, and the game menu doesn’t provide a monitor resolution adjustment, so you’re stuck in what appears to be no sharper than 800 X 600 mode (or its widescreen equivalent), something that hasn’t been a PC-gaming standard in almost a decade. The renderings of the characters’ faces are excellent; fans of the show will easily recognize the actors’ faces, but the whole game looks as if Glyphic has taken the Nintendo DS version and blown up the visuals for the PC without alteration. The dialogue is strained at best, and the writers have tried to tie the five cases together with a flimsy subplot about a mysterious guitar purchased by House’s boss. The game looks like it was designed for children, but the dialogue is filled with advanced medical terminology that the layman might have trouble pronouncing, much less understanding. Some of the minigames make sense, such as the one in which you select the correct items to use to examine patients. But most of them are silly timewasters; manually spinning a centrifuge to separate blood samples, clicking on valves and turning wheels to operate a blood analyzer, equipment that only requires pushing a button in real life. And the silliest: you play a game of Breakout in a cross-section of House’s brain to come up with the ultimate solution to several of the cases. All of this requires very little skill and a minimum of hand-eye coordination, and you’re led by the nose through all of it by constantly repeating instructions that you can’t turn off.

I’ve always been a big fan of the House TV show, and even though I knew what was coming, I looked forward to playing House, MD. But not even the most diehard House fan will find much to enjoy in this game. The graphics are primitive, the writing is spotty at best, and the gameplay shows no respect for the intelligence of the intended audience; even the bits with the medical jargon are nothing more than dizzying toss-up rounds of Wheel of Fortune. Gamers in general, and House watchers in particular, should give this game a very wide berth.

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