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I approached Lifesigns expecting a surgical game that would challenge my reflexes. Instead, I appear to have been dropped into the middle of a Japanese soap opera. Much like the TV show "ER," it's a wonder the doctor has time to see any patients what with all the gossip and intrigue.

The game begins with what turns out to be a dream sequence — not that it's all that much stranger than what happens when my character isn't dreaming. I am Dr. Tendo, a second-year surgical intern. My supervisor is Dr. Suzu Aso. In my dream, we are outside the hospital, watching the cherry blossoms, and she is sounding like she's about to make some very improper advances. Things go downhill and off into leftfield from there. And then I wake up in the night duty room.

Actually, it begins with something a little funnier than that, kinda. There's a warning screen that the game is not instructing you in real surgical procedures and that you absolutely should not try these things in real life. Whew, what a relief. And here I was planning to give the dog an appendectomy next week (yes, insert sarcasm here).

You know, I wouldn't mind the wacky story elements so much if it didn't print out the text o-n-e l-e-t-t-e-r a-t a t-i-m-e with a little ticky noise for each letter. And there's no way I've found to make the text appear any faster. I swear, I have not yet attempted my first operation, and I'm already at the point of wanting to throw the game across the room. OK, maybe I'm a little impatient, but what's wrong with displaying the text all at once instead of making it seem like it's coming out of a ticker-tape machine?

I'm not sure how long it took me to find that the head nurse has given me a nickname and that she thinks the pediatric intern is secretly dating me. I learn the anesthesiologist has a weird sense of humor and that he warns me off dating a nurse that I have no idea if I'm interested in or not — that he's not dating either, but he might be? My long-lost biological father, Professor Sawai, is the head of the hospital. (The man has crazy white Beethoven hair and a cravat — I kid you not.) He's doing some esoteric drug research studies and wants me to quit my training and go work with him. I even get the drama of my first patient worrying about missing work and paying her hospital bill and that she's the sole caretaker of her apparently delinquent younger brother, who claims to have killed both of their parents (the same ones she says died together in a car accident). Oh, and we also learn that while she works in the office of a school, she actually hates children. And what does all of this have to do with examining her and performing an appendectomy? Not a damn thing as far as I can tell, but here we are.

Finally, after interminable strings of dialogue, we finally got to my first operation — an appendectomy. The first time you ever get to see the procedures or use these instruments is live on your first patient. To me, it's incredibly frustrating to jump into something with an easy chance of failure without having any opportunity to practice at least a little. Not only did I nearly kill the patient, I have screen after screen of people telling me how disappointed they are in me. And then, finally, I get the Game Over screen.

According to the manual, if I complete the entire story and all operations successfully, at the end I'll unlock a new button called Extra. This will open five minigames for me to play and also will let me revisit any of the 11 operations of the main game. On top of that, if I earn enough points, I can unlock even extra extras to get new operations and minigames. There's even a gallery to view scenes from the game. If you ask me, the game would have been much improved by allowing access to surgical practice and minigames so that someone like me has even a remote chance of finishing the story part of the game.

Actually, it was initially somewhat of a relief when I finally got punted. I didn't think my blood pressure could handle the conversation side of the game, and my fine motor skills are being challenged by the surgical part. Come to think of it, I haven't even been watching ER since midway through last season. I am a somewhat determined person though, and I'm not ready to admit that a game can best me that fast. So ...

I did actually gird my loins and start from my last save. I will say that while there is only one save slot for the game, you can save pretty much as often as you want. Unfortunately, I had to go through the pre-op meeting again before the operation and re-read the operation dialog, but this time, I was able to pull off the operation without a hitch.

Lifesigns obviously has a log of story elements to explore. It's definitely more than just an operation minigame. Normally I appreciate the developers trying to include some actual story. The problem is, the absurd text display makes it really hard for me to want to work through the entire story. It did help a little to turn the sound off so that I didn't hear each letter ticking by, but that kills the background music, too. The characters are quirky enough that I do kind of want to see what happens next, but it's hard to want to commit the time it looks like it would take to do that.

If you are a fan of Japanese dramatis and believe you would enjoy a story set in a hospital with some operations and minigames thrown in, Lifesigns might well be the right game for you. The story is intriguing, and the operation part can be interesting, but getting past the implementation is a challenge.