Developed by Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim, Amateur Surgeon is a new game that begs the question, do you need a medical degree to perform surgery? Of course not. All you need, in this case anyway, is everything that you might find in say, a pizza delivery van.
Playing as Alan Probe: “Pizzaboy. Wannabe surgeon. Moron.,” you make your way through Amateur Surgeon under the not-so-keen eye of one Dr. Ignacious Bleed: “Disgraced surgeon/Vagrant. Cough syrup addict.”
Using a handful of tools such as a pizza cutter, salad tongs, stapler, and lighter you hack your way into a variety of colorful, back-alley vagrants that you run into under varying circumstances, some more violent than others.
The most entertaining part of Amateur Surgeon would have to be the dialogue and storyline, which not so coincidentally is the same part that got Amateur Surgeon an “R” rating in the App Store and a 17+ disclaimer for “mature themes, horror, profanity, crude humor, violence, and drug use.”
On the other hand, the mini-games that make up Amateur Surgeon are fun, to begin with, but after a while, they can get a bit tedious when the game fails to recognize where you are placing your finger.
For example, in nearly all of your operations you will have to cut, staple, burn, and “salve” your patients, but for some reason on certain lesions, even though you are putting your finger directly on the wound, the game will tell you that you are in the wrong area.
It also does this with the cutting part which is the most annoying because there really isn’t anything you can do but keep trying until the game realizes that you are in the right spot. Now, I have pretty small fingers and I ended up using my pinkie so I can only imagine what some people are experiencing with this game.
The only advice I have in this regard is to be patient with the cutting part and if you are having trouble with the lighter, just go back and staple the hell out of the cut you are supposedly missing before trying to burn it again. If you can get past Amateur Surgeon not recognizing your finger placement then you are in for a real treat.
The actions in the mini-game may be repetitive at times but there are plenty of new tools introduced throughout the game to keep you interested — not to mention the endless entertainment supplied by a cast of deranged characters typical of Adult Swim. Even if you can’t get into the games, the sheer hilarity of the storyline is enough to get you hooked, or at least wondering what the next silhouetted figure in your patient file has in store.
