Intriguing medical sim
Wannabe doctors keen to try their hand at surgery could do worse than check out this educational title that gives you the opportunity to get your hands covered in virtual blood and guarantees that you won't lose a patient on the operating table. While the game certainly isn't overly realistic, there is a lot of detail on display here and it gets points for trying to do something different, which it achieves in entertaining fashion. Players start as medical trainees and must complete various surgeries in order to advance their career. For each new case, you get a briefing on the patient's history and their problem, but fortunately there are plenty of help files available to allow you to brush up on the more complicated medical details that you might have forgotten (or more likely, never knew in the first place!). The surgery itself takes place on a microscopic level, where you are injected into the patient's body, and plays out in real time so you need to know your facts before you start hacking away at the wrong part. Laser Surgeon certainly takes an original idea and is quite successful, but a couple of points stand in the way of it being a must-play. Firstly, the controls are less than intuitive, and while this might add to the realism, it certainly makes things overly challenging and frustrating, certainly at the beginning. Furthermore, the graphics are also somewhat fuzzy and indistinct, which makes precision, a vital part of any surgery, rather difficult to come by at times. If you can get past these two points, then there is some entertainment to be had here, while Theme Hospital and Life and Death are also worth checking out if you are after some medical-themed fun.
