House, M.D.

Can the boorish behavior be attractive? Do you know any drug addicted person that seems to be so cute? If your answer is “no” in both cases then you've never seen TV series called House, M.D. Otherwise the statement of Gregory House “Everybody lies” is true. Legacy Games did a great job featuring all of the wit and humor that had made the series such a success. Playing House, M.D. you'll wear the shoes of the titular character and have to unravel 5 different medical mysteries in the 5 episodes. And of course your team including everyone you know starting with Dr. James Wilson up to Dr. Remy "Thirteen" Hadley. But I have to warn you, if you're not a series' fan, the game might seem a mix of total bore and senseless actions to you as it has no tutorial or other kind of introduction to the theme.

The game is all about the medicine, so after playing it many of the terms that you've heard before in the hospitals will become clear to you.

It is easy to predict that the adventure takes place in the Princeton-Plainsboro Teaching Hospital. But hardly you can play the game "spot the differences" between the location featured in the TV-show and the one that was created by Legacy Games as people are in the center of the actions, and the patients are dieing because of the strange diseases and you have to make the diagnosis before this becomes needless. And in order to do that you'll have to progress through the various mini-games. At first the patient's symptoms need to be checked. So your task is to examine the poor ones by means of clicking on various points of their body. For this purpose you're given four different instruments. And before you figure out what is actually wring you're to choose the right tool for the procedure and click on the right spot on the body. Relax, the game is not letting to use the wrong instrument on the wrong places, so your mission is not impossible!

But this is not the only medical procedure you'll do. The game is all about the medicine, so after playing it many of the terms that you've heard before in the hospitals will become clear to you. As for example you'll take the samples of the patient's blood and then separate it in a centrifuge. But being fun at the beginning the procedure turned out to be rather frustrating mini-game to me. The problem was that the device sometimes doesn't recognize a spinning motion and I got stuck. The only thought that calmed me down those moments was that in real life the doctors faced the problems that were much worse. And finally I managed to cope with the centrifuge. But I couldn't cope with the disappointment when the same mini-games were repeated numerous times, making even the best of them dull by the end of the game.

Gregory House is often called Sherlock Holmes in the medical world due to a number of investigation elements that are used in the movie. If anyone of his team loses his job one day, he or she can easily become a criminal thanks to the experience of breaking into the patients' houses. The investigations in the game doesn't boil down to questioning witnesses but it takes you to various scenes including the patients' homes. The interviewing reminds the examining: you're given a set of question and picking the wrong brings you no punishment but makes you just re-ask. The hidden object scenes differ from the ones you're used to: instead giving you the list of the items to find, the game proposes you to scour the locations and collect everything that is highlighted when you run your mouse over it.

The artwork is great. All the characters are recognizable. But the game really lacks some voice overing. All the conversations are written to you, but the lines are not referred to the names, so sometimes it's not clear whose words are there. On the other hands for those of the players who are  the series' fans it could be irritating to listen to the unfamiliar voices as they are used to the actors' ones.

House, M.D. can be a nice option for those of you who adore watching Gregory writing on the board and making his sarcastic remarks, but if you're looking for a challenging mini-games and traditional hidden objects' lists that's not for you.

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