From Legacy Interactive and Real Life Games
You are the brand new vet just starting in the Emergency Clinic. Your patients will vary in species, complaints and treatments. There are several assistants who will be helping you, each of whom have their own problems and good points.
The game features real life problems that might occur in a vet emergency clinic. Like a dog that has been attacked, a cat who has problems eating or a snake that isn't well. There is an assortment of patients in the waiting room at any one time. You select the most critical patient, then move into the treatment room.
The game begins with you in the lobby. You'll have a list of patients to chose from and a computer to access to tell you about their conditions, if you know enough to find problem in the database. From the lobby you can go to the lounge or the treatment rooms. In the lounge is some virtual coffee and a trivia game. Select the most critical patient from the list
The clock starts for your score from the moment you choose a patient. This isn't critical in beginners mode, the game shows you which piece of equipment to use next and you have an infinite amount of hints. You'll have the opportunity to learn the various trays and contents. But once you move above beginner, you'll need to research the complaint before you start. This way, you'll have the best chance of doing the correct procedures and in the best order.
There are two treatment rooms, but I was never confident enough to use both! I believe the idea is there is a regular treatment room and a trauma room for the most critical cases. I hope that you never need to use both rooms at the same time.
If you are doing well, your assistants will either say so or talk about other things. They will be quite blunt when you are making mistakes. A nice feature of the game is that you earn promotions as you correctly finish problems. If you complete all the patients with a reasonable success rate, you'll become the main vet at the clinic.
The trivia game is cute, but sometimes wrong. A couple of questions that I know have incorrect answers are: African rhinos have 2 horns, not Indian. The Orca or Killer Whale is a mammal, and therefore cannot possibly be related to sharks. I'd say this was a feature added late in the game development and wasn't sufficiently checked for accuracy.
A brief tutorial on what each item in the medical trays is and how it would normally be used would be appreciated. When you are confronting a critically ill patient, it is not a good time to work out how to use an Ox-pulse meter. If this information is available, then it isn't obvious enough in the game.
Sometimes it is far too difficult to find the correct area for a procedure. On the average dog, finding the spot to place the thermometer is fairly easy. In the game, it can be quite a challenge. I won't go into how long it can take to find the 'Head' of a dog. It feels a bit silly and arbitrary when looking at an eye, or the nose (which gives you the same head of animal shot) but if you were to look at the 'Head', you haven't found the right place yet.
Very interesting and exciting simulation of a vet clinic. Use of real case studies, photographs of real animals and normal vet instruments means that you learn quite a lot. You'll need to learn proper procedures and to be able to carry them out quickly. You'll learn quite a bit about emergency treatments, tests and the order in which things should be done.
Once you start treating a patient, the clock starts ticking. A few of the animals are in critical condition (you can tell some of the effects were added digitally) and incorrect or slow treatment can kill your patient. Therefore, I would not give this game to the 8 year old who has decided to be a vet. Someone who is 17 or 18 and is still considering becoming a vet might benefit from this game.
As they warn you when you start this game, this will not make you qualified to care for real life animals. If you have a pet, it may make you more aware of problems that can occur. It certainly should give you better appreciation of your local vet clinic.