For the fans of ER comes a game solely based on the TV series. You take on the role of a new intern at Chicago's County General Hospital, where your skills and your patience will be tried in one of the busiest emergency rooms in the country. You will have the privilege to work with some of the top doctors in your field, voiced by Noah Wyle, Mekhi Phifer, Sherry Stringfield, and a few other cast members. Of course, working with such amazing doctors will put that much more pressure on you as an intern. Screw up too many times and you'll find yourself staring at the "Game Over" screen wondering what went wrong.

ER starts out just like any other simulation where you take control of a character (ala: The Sims). You will begin at the character name and creation screen. This is a pretty simple task, with not too much customizability. Character creation options include ethnicity, gender, eye color, hair color, skin tone and scrubs color. As soon as you have created your character and given him/her a name then the real work (and we do mean this quite literally) begins. You will be introduced to a few of the staff members at the hospital and then be given a few assignments to take care of. This is how the gameplay will go throughout the game. The story will progress through different "levels" if you will, which actually consist of one ER shift, and to move time along in the levels you will be given different responsibilities. Some responsibilities are more important than others, by which we mean that you could actually be fired for messing a few of the jobs up. Most of the responsibilities placed upon you aren't too demanding and will actually allow for a bit of time to be spent (if wished) socializing with some of the other hospital staff and possibly even finding yourself a lover.

One other thing we must mention is the medical skill system. There are six different types of medicine and during character creation you will be able to give yourself a small number of skill points in one or even a few of the medical skills you choose. This will give your character a head start and allow you to quickly earn more stars (which allow you to further upgrade your character's medical skills) which will be needed very much as you progress throughout the game. There are ten levels to each of the skills and from what we have seen it could take quite a few gameplay hours to get each of those skills maxed out to their potential. Also, as you increase your skill points you earn bonuses, three of which you can have working to your benefit at a time.

The graphics in this game, while definitely not awe-inspiring, are pretty good looking. The one complaint we do have is that the maximum resolution possible in this game is 1024x768, which leaves much to be desired, especially when the person you are trying to locate doesn't want to stand still. It can be very difficult to get them on the screen with you when the screen resolution is so small.

ER is a pretty interesting game overall. It's kept us on our toes worried about some of our patients but its also left us with a bit of a bad taste in our mouths as we've wondered what was next and why the gameplay couldn't have been sped up just a little bit. At times it can get quite monotonous and a little boring but there is also a lasting appeal to it that will probably keep us coming back for more, if not for just a little while longer.

System Requirements:
P4 1.2GHZ (or equivalent), 256MB RAM, 64MB DirectX 9 compatible card, DirectX9 compatible soundcard, 2 GB HDD space.