I'm not a doctor but I stayed at a Holiday Inn Express

So do I cut you with this or can I just skip that step and just use my trusty laser.

This is the first time I’ve played the trauma center series as I have never gotten the chance to play with the Nintendo DS version. Who doesn’t want to cut someone open and see if they can fix someone? Or better yet, be able to cut someone while drinking!

Story:
Overall the story is pretty interesting as you play as Derek Stiles (age 26). I was expecting initially to come in as a new doctor needing to learn the ropes so the game would be setup so they would teach you to do certain procedures. Oh, you’re new to the hospital all right. How can a nurse be yelling at the doctor they are assisting. I’m not saying nurses can’t or shouldn’t but if you’re a doctor I would think they should be shown a certain level of respect regardless of experience. The whole time I’m playing I just wanted to turn around and give that nurse what she has coming to her.

Gameplay:
Single player with remote + nunchuk

With remote and nunchuk in hand this game is a blast. You get the reminder that this game needs to play with the nunchuk which is helpful as most of the times I don’t even have the nunchuk attached because not all games need it. I’m sure glad they did use it. The remote are your hands and it doesn’t matter if your left or right handed. The nunchuk performs as a tool selector. After just the first 3 surgeries most gamers should be able to fly through the general procedures. Now memorization is a different animal all together. The first couple missions you get force fed to what tool to use and what to do. As you progress a little farther they pretty much tell you, “It’s all you bud”. This was a bit of a shock as I wanted my hand held a bit longer before I was randomly choosing tools to stab patients with. If you don’t complete a mission you get the game over screen that pretty much states you felt like you were a failure and left medicine all together. I thought that was a bit harsh considering surgeries are hard to perform and some mistakes are to be made. Good thing you can skip the dialogue by pressing the “+” button.

You get your basic things to do like cleaning up the wounds, then making incisions on the dotted line. The first couple surgeries consist of tumors where you drain blood and remove the tumor with forceps. To use the forceps you actually press both A + B which makes sense even though I was thinking it was just the A button for awhile. You actually remove like glass by grabbing the shard, pulling it out without causing more damage, and then placing it in a metal pan just like the movies!

Each mission you can get a grade of C, B, A, S. Getting the “S” as master surgeon isn’t too hard so just making crazy stitches by zig zagging to save time is acceptable. I’m just glad I’m not stitching up my own leg.

The defibulator sequences where you have to revive a car accident victim is interesting but not as responsive as the other tools. They want you to push forward and press both triggers which I was only successful in doing my 3rd try. I wish they would make you rub the defibulator together to smear that gel together like in the movies before they stick it on the patient so they don’t burn their chest.

On the later stages you find out you got some special skills that you can turn on. With a simple drawing of a star, you can be like Neo and slow down time. I guess they can pen the name instead of "bullet time" it can be more like "scalpel time". You will curse the day you can't make a simple star to get you past those impossible levels that require this move.

In the later stages, the difficulty level starts to go from hard to "why must you torture me?". This game is so hard that even guides from internet sites teaching you how to beat a certain level says "good luck on this level cause you will definitely need it." Once the game starts to introducing more "videogame" challenges, the difficulty level changes from needing surgical hands to gaming god. I'm not saying the games isn't beatable, but casual gamers will beat this game as the later stages require alot of gaming skill.

Graphics:
Is there gore? Not really. The graphics are of the gamecube variety and doesn’t really have that “wow” factor of today’s games, but it is good enough to get the job done. I was expecting a lot more three dimensional blood. Like when I was making an incision and my knife was all over the place I wanted the special effects where the screen gets blood splatter. That would be a good use of the remote to having to wipe the blood off my visor.

Pros:
It uses the remote and nunchuk well. The game would not work with a basic controller. The game goes above and beyond the basic game of operation. Having to memorize surgical steps without it being force fed to you makes it feel more real. Who doesn’t like putting back bones together only get rejected because you put the wrong piece back in it’s place. This game is a great way to display how games can be played and a perfect way to show off the power of the Nintendo wii. There is a nice use of the rumble feature on the remote.


Cons:
No multiplayer
Not online capable
Could use better graphics
No speech, just a bunch of text reading