Remember playing the battery-operated board game "Operation" by Milton Bradley as a kid?

I do, I loved the game, even though I sucked at it. It really tested your hand-eye coordination. Poor Cavity Sam, I think I maimed and killed the sweet guy with the big red nose that lit up. I still have nightmares about it.

Well anyway, what do you do when you are the doctor and someone comes into your hospital with butterflies in their stomach, water on the knee, and a frog in the throat? Operate of course! Now there's an online version of the old favorite called "Operation Mania" by EA Games.

As the story (if you can call it that) goes, you play Dr. Humerus who is an up and coming surgeon, you must help him as he builds his medical career and is called in to save the day at five different hospitals in fun and wacky locations.

Can't stand the sight of blood? Don't worry, it's strictly G-rated cartoony stuff here folks, just like the board game version. You will treat patients with the wackiest ailments in healthcare history. But more on that later.

Your goal is to become an expert surgeon as you click the lovable clown-nosed customer Cavity Sam, drag him to admissions, process his paperwork, dump dude on the operating table, perform surgery, save a life and oh yeah...collect some cash!

Each stage plays out much like any other RTS games such as "Diner Dash"and "Pet Vet", as you attempt to please as many patients as possible. Make a patient wait to long to be admitted may result in fatalities! (And we all know how lethal butterflies in the stomach can be!)

SideNote:Oddly enough, even though it plays like a "customer service type" game where speed always becomes the ultimate challenge, I found the patients to be relatively calm, and patient (no pun intended.) It's weird how much crankier hungry people are compared to ailing ones!That's not to say this is a slow paced game that lets you take your time by any means. The faster you attend to each of the arriving sick persons needs, of course, the more money you’ll earn towards achieving the daily goal before the ever-ticking clock runs out.  

Paging Dr. Humerus

People will come to Dr. Humerus with the wackiest of ailments such as butterflies in the stomach, brain freeze, water on the knee, and wrenched ankles. Once you admit them, you must drag them over the operating table where you can have the CPU, Dr. H work his magic or you can do the delicate surgery yourself. I always did the surgeries myself because 1.) this earns you more money and 2.) quite frankly isn't that the whole point to the game? The surgeries are fun and still require a steady hand, in fact some of them can be a real challenge.The only difference is instead of a lil plastic tweezer as your main instrument this time you use your mouse.

While most successful surgeons spend their high incomes buying fancy houses, boats and such your hard earned money will be spent buying upgrades for the hospital, which includes better equipment, faster service and more staff.

While I thought they did a great job of taking the popular 40 year old "Operation" board game and injecting some new life into it, after only a few levels of gameplay it did kind of "flatline" for me. In other words, it got repetitious even with all the fun minigame diversions and all that. So in the end, I consider it more well done knock-off that's worth a casual look -over rather than a must play.

Now if you'll excuse me, I must attend to a patient who just came in with a nasty case of elbow grease!

Get Operation Mania Here