Customer Reviews

Imagine Family Doctor

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

In this game you can imagine being a doctor. You play as the role of a new doctor in town named Abby.

In the game you get to do things that real doctors do such as: giving checkups, getting the height and weight of patients, taking temperatures, taking blood pressure and pulse, doing eye exams, analyzing coughs, doing x-rays, removing splinters, comparing different marks such as (bruises, scratches, spots, etc), and doing allegry tests.

I think this game is fun and interesting.

I would recommend it to people who are doctors, want to become doctors, or if they like the imagine game series(like I do.

I am 11 years old and bought this game with my old money, and it was worth it!!!
The game is not to short and is not too long. I finished the game but I am still playing, because you can still get customers. Plus the game is just really fun and I guess it helps that I want to be a doctor. I recommend this game for ages 8-13.

This is a cute game that is fun. The children that I care for (ages 7-12) really enjoy this game. The only complaints are that so many of the people look alike and that too many of the people in the game had the exact same ailments. Other than that, the kids enjoy the interaction and say it's a lot of fun.

I bought this game knowing that it was probably geared towards kids but it is incredibly boring! I am a doctor and am disappointed in how inaccurate this game is. The doctor tells his patient with a blood pressure of 140/104 that his pressure is fine! She also can diagnose strep throat just by looking at the throat but then only treats it with something for the fever. She sees 4 or 5 patients in a day and the scenarios are the same. I bought this game last week and am going to trade it in immediately. I don't even think my 11-year old will think it's fun!

I bought this because I love doctor games, and I have got to say, it was a real disappointment. You can't customize your character at all other than changing her clothes occasionally with only five or so options and there's an alternate story line that I could care less about that takes up more of the game than the actual doctoring. The patients all look the same, the symptoms vary very slightly, and I was able to finish it in about five hours, tops. Very boring, no variety, and not worth the money I spent for it. Replaying is no fun because everything was predictable from the start. Trauma Center is much more fun (even if I don't like the challenge all the time) because you actually get to treat people, not just put ointment on their bug bites. I mean really, who goes to the doctor for a mosquito bite? And an animal scratch that's not infected? These people have like no bandages at home. I don't recommend this game to anyone but young children who are fascinated, but buy it used. It is not worth buying new, no matter what. Or rent the game. It goes too fast to get your money's worth any other way.

Yes, I'm aware that I'm not the target audience for this game since even though I'm female, I'm far too old for this game (I'm an adult and this game is for 8-12 year old girls). There is actually a rather long story behind why I picked up this game - specifically two reasons. The first one has to do with the game "Lifesigns: Surgical Unit". I picked that one up because I thought I'd have the chance to play a fun medical-themed adventure game, but I ended up not liking it too well (it has a number of problems, read my review if you're interested). "Lifesigns" deeply irritated me, and I went poking around the internet looking for a better medical-themed adventure/simulation to get my doctor fix. I really didn't find one that I thought I'd like (I'm not interested in Trauma Center because I think the gameplay may be too difficult for me and I've heard that it has very little by way of story). However, I came across "Imagine Family Doctor" and immediately thought that it would surely be terrible - but I was willing to at least give it a chance.

Now let's talk about my second reason for wanting to try this game - namely, the fact that it's aimed towards a female demographic. Long have female gamers been an ignored segment of the video game industry, and frankly, I'm kind of glad because whenever a game does get released that's supposedly aimed towards women it's usually awful (see my review of Final Fantasy X-2 - they took a wonderful game and ruined it with this crappy sequel). However, Ubisoft has stated that they specifically made the "Imagine" series to appeal to young female gamers since they constitute an untapped area of the market. Well, I believe that Ubisoft may have good intentions here. Maybe. Or maybe not. The "Imagine" series has basically been immediately dismissed by core gamers as "shovelware" - a term for low quality games churned out quickly just to exploit casual gamers/children/their parents, etc. I thought the same thing too when I first saw these games. Well, I'm interested now to see for myself if this series is any good, both as a female gamer and because I'm itching for a medical sim. Let's see how this goes...

Graphics (score 6/10): First things first, I'd like to comment on something I almost never mention in my reviews - the cover art for the game box. Normally, I wouldn't include something as inconsequential as cover art in my review, but could they have made this any less appealing?! This seems to be an issue with all the Imagine games; the cover art looks nothing like the in-game graphics stylistically. The cover art is a live-action photo of a generic scene of a woman dressed as a doctor with a child patient. It just screams "shovelware"; it's like the sort of cover that you just take one look at and think "yuck"! The actual in-game graphics are a much more appealing cartoon/semi-anime art style that would've looked better on the cover. The really weird thing is that the woman they chose for the photo looks nothing like the protagonist of the game (she's brown haired and brown-eyed and the protagonist is blonde and blue-eyed). Go figure. Well, anyway, the actual in-game graphics are decent - consisting of character portraits on still backgrounds. They're crisp and vibrant but the problem is that there is a very limited amount of facial expressions employed, so it looks very static. Obviously, they aren't the best graphics I've ever seen on the DS but for this genre they aren't too bad, just slightly below average.

Music (score 6/10): If I had to sum up the music in one word, it'd be "bland". I mean, it's been awhile since I've heard music this bland (not since Falling Stars; interestingly, another game aimed at this same target audience). I really don't know how to describe the music other than "bland" or "boring". Try to imagine elevator music - that's the vibe I get from these repetitive tunes. Well, at least the game includes more than one track. I know this game is a sim/adventure game and this genre isn't always known for its exciting music, but I've played several other similar games that had much better soundtracks, so there's no excuse. The one good thing I can say about the music is that none of it is grating or irritating on the ears, so I give this section a 6/10 for "slightly below average".

Characters (score 6/10): Once again the description I'd use is "bland". You play as Abby, a newly appointed doctor for the city of "they-don't-tell-you-the-name". She has almost no discernible personality outside of cheerful helpfulness. Then you meet her friend, Sophie, a woman who owns her own decorative boutique. Her personality is about the same as Abby's; there's just not much to say about her. The third character you're introduced to is Tony, an actor. He at least has a bit more of a personality in that they show you that he's the busy sort who's always on the run and always taking calls during his time with his friends. As far as these characters go, they're harmless and unoffensive enough, but that's just my point - they're so devoid of strong personality traits as to be boring and un-memorable. If "Imagine Family Doctor" were an RPG I'd grade it pretty harshly in this category, however, it's a sim game - games which aren't known for deep characterizations, so I'm going to be more lenient than usual.

Story (score 4/10): The storyline is just barely there. You start off as Abby, a new doctor in the city. The storyline is very minimal - for the first half of the game you just spend your time treating a plethora of generic palette-swapped patients. The actual story developments happen after work or on lunch break; these story developments usually just involve Abby treating her friends' mild illnesses outside of work. Later, the story does actually start to pick up but this only happens around Chapter 9 - and there are 12 Chapters! This means that a majority of your time is spent treating very boring and repetitive patients. Oh, and that "unknown epidemic" the synopsis on the box refers to winds up being not nearly as dramatic as it sounds. I know this is technically a sim game, but in this day and age it isn't unreasonable to expect a half-decent storyline in a game of this sort, especially one that has a theme like "being a doctor". This story just begged to have exciting medical emergencies in it! I guess Ubisoft feels like kids in the 8-12 year old range can't handle a complex storyline... When I was that age, though, I was playing Final Fantasy VII for the first time - a game that is arguably one of the greatest RPGs to have yet been created. It has a deep, complex storyline, well-developed characters and excellent gameplay to boot. If I had played a game like Imagine Family Doctor back then, I would have rejected it for the dull snooze-fest that it is (I've always been told I wasn't a typical child though, so you're mileage may vary). Even though this is a sim game and not an RPG or even an adventure game, I still feel like the storyline could've been better.

Gameplay (score 5/10): This is a bit of a catch-all category for me. So I was pretty harsh on the characters and the story, but sim games rest mostly on their gameplay, right? So, how does "Imagine Family Doctor" fare? Not too good, I must admit. The gameplay is rather repetitive, and I don't mean repetitive in that you always take a temperature the same way or take a pulse the same way - I'm talking about the patient variety. Instead of having scripted medical events/patients as part of the storyline they just have a randomized loadout of patients each day with generic ailments. Sometimes you end up with a bunch of patients that all have the same illness within a single day. This gets dull. They should've framed various specific patient characters within a stronger narrative structure. Even though I criticized the game "Lifesigns" earlier, it did do a much better job with this particular issue. It had an actual story in which distinctive patient characters came in with dramatic medical problems, such as appendicitis and ruptured spleens. Now, to be fair to this game, I understand that this game is aimed towards the younger crowd and that Abby is a family doctor, which means she wouldn't be handling those sorts of medical emergencies (those cases would be handed off to a surgeon), but it would've been much nicer to have a fewer number of patients, and have them actually come back for further appointments and character development. Also, the issues she does handle are pretty laughable. I guess they were going for a gentler approach for children because you often treat simple bruises and scrapes which just feels a bit silly. I mean, just imagine going to a doctor to have them put some Neosporin and a bandaid on a little cut. Wow. Let's talk about the actual medical procedures now. The gameplay basically consists of dragging the stylus across the screen or tapping on a button to count pulse rates, etc. All of it is incredibly easy, which is good for children I suppose ("Lifesigns" got too difficult towards the end when you're doing that open-heart surgery). In fact, the hardest thing I struggled with was the game's in-built handwriting recognition system! Imagine Family Doctor basically doesn't allow you to fail because if you get something wrong your assistant will just do it for you (although this gives you fewer points - which are used to buy decorative items - these don't really do anything though). I appreciate the easier gameplay for children (I only play turn-based RPGs and point n' click adventure games myself because I struggle with more difficult reflex-based gameplay), but it would've been nice to have some gameplay that is more cerebrally challenging. Perhaps they could've had a sort of a quiz at the end of a patient's appointment where you consider their symptoms and then deduce what their illness is from a list of possibilities based on that knowledge. There are some other things you do outside of seeing patients. These activities are pretty limited though. You spend some time in scenes that move the plot (such as it is) forwards. The other things you can do are decorating your house and office, and changing the color of your clothing. As far as I can tell, these activities don't have any impact on anything really, so it's all just cosmetic.

Overall (score 5/10): NOTE this score is not an average; it's my subjective overall score. All in all, there's nothing too offensive about this game from a female perspective, but it does feel like it's just plain old shovelware quality-wise. It's pretty obvious in retrospect when you realize that Ubisoft has released about ten Imagine games in the space of a year. That's not nearly enough time to make something decent. I've noticed, however, that a good number of people seem to like this game - well, that's good for them, I guess. I'm happy that they were able to get some enjoyment out of it, and really, it's not that this is a terrible game for young girls - it's just that it's a very dull, boring game for young girls. I'd like to make some alternative recommendations, but it's really hard to find decent sim games for children. I can, however, recommend a few good adventure games and RPGs on the DS, all of which I think an 8-12 year old girl can handle. Here's my list: Trace Memory (a good adventure game), Time Hollow (it has a Teen rating, but I don't remember anything too objectionable, and it's a fantastic game), Pokemon (definitely!), Fossil Fighters (a fun RPG where you get to raise dinosaurs), Fossil League (another fun dinosaur-themed game), Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days (has an E for Everyone rating, plus it has an excellent storyline), Chrono Trigger (excellent RPG), and lastly Touch Detective (I haven't actually played this one yet, but I hear it is very good). None of these games are medical sims, unfortunately. I guess my never-ending quest for a good medical-themed adventure/sim game continues...

Im 8years old and like playing this game. It is easy to play and fun. You pretend you are a real doctor with patients and treat their problems and look up different marks on their bodies. I also like buying things to decorate the doctor's home.

Love this game you can take your imagine dog or horse and take to imagine dr. to cure it. Love this ...only game i know of that you can do this. totally fun for any girl!!

I like this game but after you finish it you kinda get bored. I couldn't get any furniture in my office.

My nine year old LOVED this game. She got to pretend she was a real Doctor! She didnt put it down!