"The 1994 show that launched George Clooney's career (if you don't count Roseanne) had already lost the actor to Hollywood, and by 2005 was very much waning (down from a peak of 36 million viewers to 17.5m), albeit still four years from its eventual demise. Yet, honestly, there was no point in the show's lifetime when ER: The Game would have made a lick of sense."
"If you wanted silliness, you needed to change channels and watch the extraordinarily weird rival hospital drama Chicago Hope. So it remains a massive mystery how the video game incarnation of the series played like a spiritual sequel to Bullfrog's Theme Hospital. This was a game in which you had to deal with an invasion of ninjas, and perform an operation while fairies danced around you and a football player kept appearing and disappearing at the foot of the bed."
"OK, let's give this a bit of context. In 2004, EA's The Sims 2 had released, and controlling characters from an isometric view was big business. ER: The Game very much mimicked the look of the Sims sequel, with its cut-off view of walled rooms and NPC characters roaming around the corridors. And like in The Sims, you had to control your character to perform a series of tasks within strict time limits while maintaining their hygiene, health, and relations"
ER: The Game launched in the U.S. in May 2005 and arrived in the UK in September 2005. The title ties to the 1994 television medical drama ER, which had launched George Clooney's career and had declined from a peak of 36 million viewers to about 17.5 million by 2005. The game adopted an isometric, Sims-like presentation with cut-off walled rooms and roaming NPCs. Players controlled characters to complete timed tasks while managing hygiene, health, and relationships. Gameplay combined hospital scenarios with absurd elements such as ninja invasions, dancing fairies, and a ghostly football player. The result is an odd, genre-mixing tie-in.
Read at Kotaku
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