Review: Dr. Awesome, Microsurgeon M.D. (iPhone/iPod Touch)

The title of the game is Dr. Awesome, Microsurgeon M.D. If that hasn’t piqued your interest already, you better check your pulse. If it were up to me I would just rate the game based on it’s title. Publisher ngmoco brings more style and flair to their next great cost efficient title. Taking great gameplay ideas from classic titles and combining them with solid accelerometer controls, Dr. Awesome delivers.

The unique art style sets the game apart from the start. It has anime style animation with text bubbles full of odd dialogue. If you aren’t interested in any of the story line, you can just skip straight to the game. You are Dr. Awesome and you must save your patients from various types of viruses by cutting off the portion of the cell that contains the virus.

This game has been done many of times before, but developer Escalation Studios has added a new storyline and controls. To remove the viruses, you must remove parts of the cell by cutting them off. Your tool is a cursor that glides around the edges of the cell until you make your move. When you do you must avoid the viruses floating around on the inside of the cell. If you run into them, you must start over and you will lose ample amounts of time, run out of time and lose a life. You get a certain number of lives to remove all the viruses in a single patient before the patient dies. The game doesn’t require much more instruction than that. The difficulty progression is perfect. By the time you achieve some of the higher medical rankings, the viruses have evolved into missile launching monsters.

Power-ups become essential to surviving later stages of the game. To activate a power-up, simply cut into it or cut it off of the cell. There are many power-ups in the game such as time boost, speed boost and everything you need to defeat the evil viruses.

To control your cursor, you only tilt the iPhone/iPod Touch. No touch screen elements exist. Normally this is a huge risk when it comes to App Store games. They are either way too touchy and impossible to control or just flat out clunky. The developers really got the motion control perfect. You are able to maneuver the tool with complete precision in tight situations and yet it responds fast enough to evade oncoming viruses. This really is a benchmark for accelerometer controlled games.

As an added bonus, you are able to operate on patients that you personally know by using your address book contacts. How cool of an idea is that? The game will randomly pick one of your contacts and add them into the story line so you will be doing a life saving operation on your mother, brother, sister or even your boss. Just make sure you at least attempt to save your boss, this is a game for points after all, not real life.

Another subtle addition is that Dr. Awesome has a set amount of time to operate on a patient. If you started on a specific patient today and forgot to operate on them within 24 hours you will lose them, creating a good reason to come back and play the game. It’s all just a part of the natural life cycle.

Achievements, trophies, whatever you want to call them should be included in every game from now until the end of time. They just make gaming that much more enjoyable. It is so much more rewarding having a game tell you that you have done something good rather than you trying to explain to someone how great of an achievement you have accomplished. Now all you have to do is bring up your achievement list to have that sense of fulfillment. Oh yeah, Dr. Awesome has achievements and that’s great.

With all of this good what could possibly be bad about Dr. Awesome? Well, a nagging issue I had quite often is when you run into a virus and respawn, it’s difficult to get your bearings straight because you are controlling the cursor solely by the accelerometer. Sometimes when you respawn your cursor can take off and run right back into the virus that just previously set you back. There are also no leaderboards, no multiplayer, nothing to challenge you outside of yourself. Like their previous games, ngmoco has included an email feature where you can email your high score to a friend, but who wants to do that?

Doctor Awesome, Microsurgeon M.D. is a great time waster. You probably won’t be sitting down with this game for hours on end, but it is challenging enough to keep you coming back for more. The controls are wonderfully done with surgeon like precision. At $1.99, it’s hard to pass up Dr. Awesome, he truly is awesome after all.

Overall: 8 out of 10

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