Remember the game QIX? No? How about JezzBall <http://www.jezzball.net/way/cool/bl/play.html>? It’s the classic game of fencing off objects flying around on screen, until you’ve hit an overwhelming majority of the territory, which is usually 75%. The only catch is that while you’re creating the line that claims your space, it can’t be hit by any of the flying objects or else you lose some time and have to start over. Confused? Just YouTube <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lM7lMcWb8ho> it.
Dr. Awesome is a clone of this classic arcade experience, only with a unique twist. You’re a doctor operating on patients, and in order to make them better, you must fence off the viruses spreading around their body. Instead of placing straight lines, you use the iPhone’s accelerometer to create any path around the free-roaming viruses until you’ve captured at least 75% of the area. As you delve further into the game, the level progression gets exceedingly more difficult, producing multiple fast-moving viruses that attack the circular guide you control that’s creating the line around them.
While the core gameplay is incredibly addictive on its own, the atmosphere Dr. Awesome provides will keep you coming back for more. Between each patient, and every time you begin the game, small Trauma Center-like cutscenes begin between yourself and nurses, the chief or other doctors. The visual style is very Phoenix Wright-esque, and works well to give you that over-the-top sense of urgency.
Perhaps the coolest part of Dr. Awesome is the way it integrates your actual friends and family into the game by having you operate on them. How does it do this? It randomly chooses people from your phone’s actual contacts list and puts them in the game. This just adds an extra level of depth to an already deep arcade experience. When your girlfriend pops up on level 8 with 4 different viruses roaming about, you’ll make damn sure to concentrate so she makes it out of the operating room just fine. But remember that annoying guy Ron who sat beside you in Algebra? (Why did you even have his number anyway?) You might just want to casually whistle and look the other way while you completely botch the procedure to save his life. Ha! That’ll teach him to copy during finals week.
Dr. Awesome has some of the most crisp 2D images available on the App Store, and everything has a unique anime-like aspect to it that blends with the polished environment. Even the music feels dramatic and authentic and very much mirrors that of Trauma Center. Dr. Awesome has that characteristic of feeling like a true retail title, as opposed to a rushed mobile game. For the embarrassingly low price of one dollar, you’d be sick not to purchase this.
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