It’s a pretty standard trope in hidden object games really. The setup that you need to find some very specific items in a location that it littered with junk. The floors and walls just covered in “stuff.” I mean, that’s what makes these games fun… digging through the trash to find the items you covet. Well the same is true in the new Scrubs HOG, which begs the question – who in their right mind lets a hospital get this filthy?
It’s a pretty standard trope in hidden object games really. The setup that you need to find some very specific items in a location that it littered with junk. The floors and walls just covered in “stuff.” I mean, that’s what makes these games fun… digging through the trash to find the items you covet. Well the same is true in the new Scrubs HOG, which begs the question – who in their right mind lets a hospital get this filthy?
Seriously, not to belabour the point since really the only reason to play hidden object games is to dig through tons of stuff to find a needle in a haystack, but in what world would you possibly go to a hospital this trashy to either work or get healed? You play as a new doctor in the hospital, and if it were up to me, step one would be to leave that hospital and call the board of health. Game over.
Scrubs hits at a perfect time in the lifecycle of the popular long running television show… a year and a half after it went off the air. Not sure why they bothered licensing the show name and character likenesses, but they did. The weird choice feels even more out of place when you quickly realize there’s a very good chance that whoever wrote the plot and dialogue of the game has never seen an episode of the show in their lives.
The finding hidden objects part of the game takes place in the hospital from the show, populated by those same funny (in theory) characters you love and remember. The problem is that they’re never funny here, but actually pretty aggressively not funny if we’re being honest. Hence the weird feeling about the license. Fans of the show won’t be even remotely satisfied to have the gang back together like this, and people that never watched the show couldn’t care less about them being in the game at all. If people are either going to be indifferent or upset, you’ve clearly gone wrong somewhere.
Which is kind of a shame, because the actual hidden object hunt is pretty well done, albeit rote. You’ll move to different trash filled locations inside the hospital (eww) and have to find lists of items. They break up that monotony by making you deal with lists different ways. For instance, in some setups you’ll see pictures of what you need to find, other times outlines, or just the names of them. Some rooms are timed to keep you on your feet, and there are even a few mini-games thrown in.
Something new to me here was the idea of using some objects to find others. For instance, I needed to get to a cake in the fridge, but needed to have secured and used a chef outfit from a previous room to let me into the kitchen. Not all items are used, and it’s usually pretty clear which needs to be used when. An interesting addition, though to be honest. they never really felt fulfilling when you “solved” them.
If you can tolerate the strange tacked on license of the Scrubs TV show, knowing that everything the characters say or do will annoy you without fail, then you’ll find a fun little hidden object game hidden under the surface. It changes up what you need to find and how you go about doing it enough to keep you entertained while not re-inventing the wheel.
