Trauma Center dives into the Wii

Trauma Center: Second Opinion is one of the games I've been eyeing for the Wii for quite sometime, except Zelda of course. It is a port of the DS game: Trauma Center: Under the Knife, but I do not have a DS but was always intrigued by the idea of preforming surgery with on a touch screen, or in this case a wiimote.

I think it is safe to say that Trauma Center delivers as a quality launch title for the Wii. While there are a boat load of Wii launch games, few match up to the quality of Zelda or Trauma Center. I'm not saying TC is a great game, either, but it is definetly above average. Seeing as how its a launch title I'm giving it the benefit of the doubt score wise.

Visually, TC looks artistically brilliant. The organs and eye candy inside the bodies of people aren't so detailed they make you puke, but they do their job without trying for a gory look. The "glow" and bright electric look definetly improve a game like this, but you might even mistake this for a PS2 game when you first look at it. Another problem is the lack of Widescreen display which the game could have benefited from. This game will not impress you visually if you've played any modern game in the last 4 years but the gameplay makes up for its shortcomings.

The gameplay is just so smooth and fluid, as long as you don't screw up to much. You switch your tools with the nunchuk attachment and use them with the wiimote. For example, you hold down B and A to use the forceps or hold down A with the scapal to carve into someone. The game also has a detailed story to back it up with tons of text to read, otherwise you can just skip it with the "-" button. At first I read all the text because the story was quite an interesting adventure, however towards the end I was running out of time (because it was a rental) and skipped it. I never did finish it but I came pretty close with only 1 and a 1/2 chapters left (out of 6 chapters plus a "Z" chapter). The game never gets old but its length is rather short. I beat over half the game in 4 hours. Some parts can be rather long as they require trial and error to beat certain operations but the game remains fun, as long as you don't have a short temper. Some operations consist of removing tumors with your laser, scapaling out something causeing trouble, doing a kidney transplant, and much more. The Wiimote makes these tools fun and easy to use but the game requires you to quickly do these things which can be frustrating. Its disappointing that theres not voice overs, other than the occasional "Oh NO!" or "We found the GUILT" but you can easily skip the text and get back to the game. The sounds of the tools are actually quite funny and the ingame "music" does its job and keeps the pressure on when it needs to.

Speaking of the story, the game revolves around a rookie Doctor named Derek (you), who is learning the ropes and finds out he has the "Healing Touch" where he can slow down time to save patients. You eventually find out about some disease called GUILT and join an organization thats commited to treating diseases like GUILT. As I said before, the story isn't to bad for a game like this and keeps the player involved. Once you beat it though, theres not much replay value other than going for higher rank (out of A, B, C, etc.) and playing a harder difficulty.