Trauma Center. Saving People Has Never Been This Fun, Or Frustrating
Overview:
If you've never played Trauma Center, the basic gist of it is, you're a surgeon (Or Cutter, if you prefer Scrubs terminology) named Derek Stiles and you've just finished your residency at Hope Hospital. Now you get to move on to bigger and better things but first you'll be walked through the easy starting operations. Basic suturing (stitches), removing foreign objects like glass, and using a surgeons best friend, the scaple await you. As the game progresses you pick up more fun surgical instruments like an ultrasound, surgical laser and drain. And of course healing touch but more on HT later.
Story/Characters:
Ah probably the gem of the game apart from the surgery itself. The characters of the story are designed with a heavy influence of our friends from Japans mangas. From our young surgical master Derek, to the older more experienced Doc Hoffman, every character looks and feels like they belong in the game.
But the storyline itself focuses on Derek's rise from a rookie to a master surgeon. How it does this, is through well written dialogue from pre op to post op, its heavy on reading but the storyline is well done that I didn't find this to be too much of a burden. In fact it reminds me of the writing used in Ace Attorney, just with a bigger medical flavour to it. I'm not going to spoil the game for those who haven't played it.
Oh right I forgot about Naomi/Nozomi. Naomi, well I havent spent too much time with her character yet so I cant really comment on her too much. But from I have gathered, she's a surgical whiz just like Derek only with a dark secret in her past which I havent discovered too much about. But from the locations her operations take place in, I've guessed it has something to do with the storys main villain. Oh she also possess healing touch, only hers is different to Derek's.
Gameplay:
Surgery, looks hard on TV shows right? Well SO throws you in at the deep end but the first few ops are so easy that its really hard to actually accidentally kill a patient you're trying to save. But later ops when you've got to juggle, two or even four things at a time, thats when it gets hard and some ops will drive you insane for what should be only minor mistakes but land up costing you the patients life. But dont let that drive you off, the ops are fun and can be made easier with Healing Touch. HT is a power only a few doctors possess, those doctors are thought to be descended from Asclepius, the greek god of medicine himself. Derek's HT slows down time giving you 4 seconds surgery time for every 1 second of op time limit passed. Naomi/Nozomi (Why can't the European version just be the same, its obvious Nozomi is meant to be Naomi anyway), well her HT boosts vitals for a certain grade of accuracy in operating. Operational moves are rated as Bad, Ok, Good or Cool. Cool being the best, Bad being the worst. Operations themselves are ranked from S through to C (I think, I've never scored lower than C) or on Hard XS, S, you get the idea.
Sound/Music:
Nothing too special here, most of the tracks are just rehashed DS tracks. Which is just fine with me because the DS music was great. SO's tracks sound great and I'm listening to one of my favorite tracks from the game as I type this. Yeah its just that good.
Difficulty:
So there are 3 difficulty settings in TC. Easy, Normal and Hard. The main difference between the 3 being the rate vitals drop off, penalties for wrong moves etc. Which is a welcome change from the DS's one difficulty suits all approach.
Lasting Appeal:
There's alot of lasting appeal in this. The desire to see an S or XS rank beside every operation is a challenge some people will savour.
DS-Wii Changes/Control:
Not too many to speak of, most of the changes are mainly in the way the games controlled. The Wii mote acts as your scaple or other surgical instrument, while the nunchuck acts as the tool selector. Its a welcome change from the DS where you'd have to tap the tool you wanted to switch costing you valuable time. The Wii definitely beats the DS in my opinion on controls.
Apart from the control changeover from DS a few of the ops have been changed. I'm not going to reveal which ones but there is an op on Wii which is like its DS counterpart for only the first phase of the op, the rest of it is completely different. So if like me you come into Second Opinion expecting to blast through the operations easily, think again.
Overall Rating: 9/10.
Challenging, frustrating and fun in one game is hard to find these days. SO delivers on all three and with a great cast of characters and some good music to back it up.