Life & Death is a game which casts you as a doctor in a hospital. Your job is to diagnose patients and administer appropriate therapies, or even perform surgery when necessary.
To diagnose a patient, you have to press on his or her abdomen, to see which portions of the stomach cause pain. Basing on this knowledge, you can choose a therapy for him (observation, medication or referring to another specialist) or administer a X-Ray or ultrasound scan to get more information about his illness.
In some cases, surgery will be necessary. You're the surgeon and you have to perform the operation very carefully, adhering strictly to the procedures, preserving hygiene, and maintaining care when cutting up the patient.
Should you mistakenly administer the wrong therapy, or kill your patient at the operating table, you're kicked into the medical school, where you're given hints as to what you've done wrong.
Life and Death is a simulation. "A simulation of what?" you may ask. Well, in Life and death you play the role of a surgeon and a doctor in Toolworks general hospital.
When you start the game you will be greeted by the main corridor. On your left will be the receptionist, so you better sign in before you get to work. Once you have done that you will get to do the fun bit, the thing you have always wanted to do: Diagnose pataints.
You start off by pokeing parts of the patients abdomen ewwwwww and see what they say (just don't poke to much). There is also a number of tools to help, like the x-ray.
Once you have found out what's wrong with the patients (after a few deaths), you get to do the most fun thing in the game: OPERATE! Yes, operate on the pataint, which is not an easy job, and can get messy if you're not careful. Like me: with the first person I operated on I forgot to turn the gas on.
Operating has to be the hardest part in the game. Luckily there's a good manual - well, this game was made by a doctor. You will also find a number of problems while operating, such as bleeding and heart problems. It took me about 50 people to do the first operation and with much looking at the walkthrough.
Overall Life and Death is a great game and you will learn loads even if it's a little hard to complete. It may not be everyones cup of tea, but give it a try - you may just like it.
I rate this game 5 because there a very few games of this type and even fewer abandon ones.
The most unusual game of its time by far! Life & Death gives you the power of deciding on who lives and who dies by letting you be - a surgeon doctor!
Once you start the game you will be asked to take a look at various patients that arrive to the hospital, examine then, give a diagnosis and, if neccessary - operate! The operation itself is the most difficult part of the game as you will have to do exactly the same thing as real life doctors do! And each mistake may result in death of a patient. Fortunately (or not!) you don't get sacked from job; instead, you will attend medical lessons and be given many hints on how to deal with the situation correctly.
The operations get more and more difficult (as if they are not difficult at the start) as you advance. You will even be able to select the staff for each operation, use x-ray and other aparatus and give out medication.
Talk about unusual! Just the idea made me give the game 10% more for the final rating. It was very popular among the students of medicine in the late eighties.
One hell of a hospital/doctor simulation. Treat your patients, listen to their complaints, press on some places on their stomach and see what kind of illnes they have. Operate, medicate and more. But look out! If you make wrong decisions, they could die. Especially for operating your patients, you could need a manual, I'm still looking for it, I upload it when I find one! Your a starting doctor and you still have class, but if you manage to get through the first part, you might be able to become one of the best doctors in the hospital, that's your goal. Surgery is very hard and you might be unable, because of things are sometimes very unclear.
Life and Death is none only one of the few games about medical things and hospital but it's also a quite serious game and in no way similar to the hilarious game Theme Hospital. In Life and Death it's real diseases that you have to cure. There are 3 different game levels but I recommend you stay on the easiest to start with as it's hard to get started with as not all symptoms are that clear and therefore hard to give a good recommendation to.
You start the game by entering the medical class where you will be told a little about different things you will experience as a doctor. You will then get your first patient where you can read a little about the patient, what symptoms they have and you can then start examining them. You do this by pressing them on their body and if they are in pain they will say so. The first few patients are simply things if you just know the correct answer. Once you get new patients you will have to learn surgery as well and that is where the game really shows it's unique details.
The graphics are good enough to show the essential things in the game and the actual hospital and the way you move around is well made compared to the year Life and Death was published (in 1988). Overall Life and Death is a great game for people interested in this quite different genre. Not only because there are a lot of challenges but also because you can learn a lot from since you will be told what you did wrong after each patient if you choose the wrong thing to do with them in the medical school. A great game.
How to run this game on modern Windows PC?
People who downloaded Life and Death have also downloaded:
Life and Death 2: The Brain, Emergency Room, Rags to Riches (a.k.a. Wall Street Manager), Objection!, Shadow President, Where in The World is Carmen Sandiego? (Enhanced), Capitalism Plus, Microsoft Flight Simulator X
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