How did that corn dog get inside his foot?

Trauma Center: Second Opinion is the sequel of a DS game. The gameplay with these two games is relatively unchanged in the formula, and the only real difference between the two games is the type of action.

Trauma Center has a very unique, but not necessarily creative idea. The two systems that the game could only really work on would be the DS and the Wii, and on both systems, the game works perfectly. In the game, you play as a young surgeon. As people come in who need surgery, you have to operate. There is a story, but it's extremely dull. They just show you a 2 dimensional environment in between surgeries, and the different hospital workers exchange in text conversations. There is really no drama, no humor, no nothing to the story. New people join the staff, and talk to you about just totally random stuff and after the first few times reading through the dialogue, your just going to want to skip through the story because of how dull it is.

So how does the game work? Well, it's a simple idea, but they made it in the most complex way they really could. The controller really acts as the surgeon's hand. Move it around the screen and a dot will be moving around the screen where the Wii remote is pointed. Once you figure out moving around the screen, you have to figure out how to do a surgery. Your character never moves in the game, you are always pointed towards a body. Various injuries will enter their way into the operating room, and you have to use your knowledge of the game to fix them.

To heal your patient you start off with 8 different tools. The tools you start off with are: stitches, drain, laser, ultrasound, scalpel, forceps, antibiotic gel and syringes. After playing a little bit, sometimes different instruments will be swapped out with other instruments such as the ultrasound tool may be switched with a magnification tool at times and eventually you get a defibrillator. Each object has you use it a different way. If you are doing stitches, you will have to hold down A and do a zig zag movement with the Wii remote. If you are using the forceps to take out a piece of glass in the patient's skin, press and hold A and B at the same time and drag it out without letting the glass touch any other part of the skin, and then place it in the tray near you. If you are using the scalpel to open the skin, there will be a line in the screen, follow the line that appears to cut through the skin. After removing a tumor, put a bandage over the area and then disinfect the surrounding parts! The game almost feels like a series of the same mini games in which you have to complete until you complete your surgery.

During the surgery you have to be cautious of damaging the body. So if you are cutting the skin open and you stray off the line, (which is very easy to do with such sensitive Wii remote movement) you will damage your patient and part of his life will go down. There is also a mysterious potion that appears sometimes and you can inject him with that to boost up his life. Oddly enough, when this vial appears, you have an unlimited supply of this stuff so you can really just heal to your heart's content. As you play, you also need to watch the clock because the surgery will be a failure if you don't finish it within the alloted time.

After the training, the game really pretty much leaves you alone to figure out some of the stuff in the game. If you watch a gameplay video of this online, the game will look extremely complex, and it really is pretty complex, but after a few games, since the game uses a variety of patterns to show you what you need to do, (like a yellow line where you need to cut) your brain really associates different patterns with what you need to use; after playing for about 20 minutes, and seeing so many different patterns and learning what to do with them, I knew what I needed to do when I saw those patterns again. As the game goes on, you will be introduced to new patterns, and they generally will tell you what to do with the new ones, and if they don't, usually common sense will work. It's a really hectic game, but if you think about it, you can't really do much with what the game has in it, and after a little bit you are going to feel an extreme amount of repeated gameplay. Every surgery feels similar, even though you are doing the same thing, and each one gets a little more difficult, but after playing for about a half hour, you've really seen all the game has to offer. The game certainly has a really cool concept, and the gameplay is a whole lot of hectic fun, and some of the best use of the Wii remote yet, but I gotta get it out there that this game is really repetitive. Even though so much is repeated through the game, it still manages to stay fun throughout!

The graphics in the game really look just like the DS version of the game. The characters are all anime characters, and their faces just pop in on the side of the screen and you have to read text. There is no animations with the players, they're stand in the same position the whole game as the text flies by their faces. As for the actual in game graphics, they look fine, but nothing spectacular. The game doesn't emulate the amount of blood that actual surgeries in real surgeries and is kid friendly, (and there is no nudity either). You are looking at all the body parts in a curved shape, which makes the body parts look more three dimensional, but everything in the game really is two dimensional with curves that make it look 3d. This isn't particularily bad, you don't need amazing graphics for this sort of thing, but still, they could have made the textures look more 3d. Everything looks really cartoony, so really even a really queezy person could play this game.

The sound in the game is absolutely horrid. There are only a few voiceovers, but they are repeated over and over again. During the surgery you will have the nurse near you saying "Dr. Stylus" wait five seconds "Dr. Stylus" .... "Dr. Stylus." As for the music, each episode consists of their own song in the operating room. This song is extremely intense with violin and pianos playing. The song gets pretty annoying after the first few minutes and a doctor who was in my room said, "Man, I can't imagine having to operate with this music playing in the background." Each episode has new music for the operating room, but they all sound the same, but with slightly different tunes. The game is extremely nerveracking as it is, why add extremely nerveracking music?

So should you buy this game? It's another one of those Wii launch titles that is fun to pop in once and a while. It's a great game, that's a whole lot of fun, but after a while, it gets pretty repetitive. I'm giving this four stars because this game is so fun, it may not be a graphical and musical masterpiece, but it's fun! Definitely worth trying!