Monday 04 Jun 2007

Trauma Center: Second Opinion is a medical drama simulation which places the patients’ lives in your hands as you experience the O.R. like never before. Admit it, at some stage in life everyone likes to play doctor, and with Trauma Center: Second Opinion you will feel the satisfaction of saving a patient’s life as well as the sadness and anger at losing one.

The thought of assuming the identity of a doctor and operating in a game seemed novel and fun to me, something different from the generic ‘blow up anything that moves’ genre which appears to be very popular in our generation. With that said, I must admit that I was a bit skeptical when I began playing this game because I honestly just did not know how they were going to pull it off. I now have that answer, extremely well!

Even though this game was a port of Trauma Centre: Under the Knife for the DS, I think it is fair to say that it feels as if it was designed with the Wii in mind. With the Wii Remote in your right hand and the Nunchuck in your left hand, the controls are easy and intuitive. It is not just a straight port either, this Wii-make is basically a new game featuring new graphics and animation, new and remixed musical themes, new surgical implements and operation types, a second playable character with new missions, multiple difficulty modes for gamers of all skill levels and, most importantly, a control system that has been revised to take full advantage of the Wii Remote. The new tools really make good use of the Wii Remote and are sure to keep doctors on their toes. Once such tool is the Defibrillator which is used when a patient is suffering from cardiac arrest - you will find the word ‘Clear!’ escaping from your lips before you even know it.

Let’s begin the operation

Doctors, you will operate with the Wii Remote in your right hand. There is a vast improvement in ease of use from Under the Knife, besides the fact that it is obviously easier to see what is going on because it is a larger screen, it is also easier to select the instruments. There is a wheel in the bottom left hand side of the screen which depicts which instruments you currently have available. Basically, every notch on the Nunchuck is allocated to a specific instrument and when you select that notch on the Nunchuck it will select an instrument. By selecting the instruments in your left hand, you can operate quickly with your right hand and never have to double across yourself. The Nunchuck will let you swap tools quickly and enables gamers to operate with both hands. The control mechanism is seamless, intuitive and, quite honestly, cannot be faulted. Players will operate using the Wii Remote, allowing for precision control of the surgical implements.

You can choose between three difficulty levels: easy, normal and hard. I started by playing the game through on easy which is a good way to learn how the controls work and just generally get into the game. A word to the wise, easy is still quite challenging so I wouldn’t just head straight into normal or hard, especially since hard is dauntingly described by the publishers as ‘possibly more challenging than performing surgery in real life.’ With that being said, in my opinion, this game has a high replayability factor since I was keen to play it again on normal mode.

There is even a high replayability factor within each mode as players will achieve different ranks based on the score obtained depending on how the operation was carried out. So you can either boast to your friends that you are a Master Surgeon, Senior Surgeon, Specialist or, like me, be content with Rookie Doctor and be thankful that you never trained to become a real life doctor. Once a surgery has been completed, you can repeat it to try and obtain a better rank. Players can earn points by achieving chains of correct actions in the procedure as well as a Vital Bonus, Time Bonus and Special Bonus which are awarded based on how much time is left on the clock once the patient is stable.

Living Guilt free

Let’s get into the plot a little. The year is 2018 and mankind has overcome diseases which were thought incurable such as AIDS and Cancer. Doctors are not, however, a thing of the past and are still around to care for people when they fall ill. Luckily too, because soon a new terrorist designed virus surfaces, a new threat called GUILT. Caduceus International is an organization that researches and eradicates incurable diseases. They know little about this disease but suspect that it is being used for medical terrorism. Enter Derek Styles.

Players assume the role of Derek Styles, a young surgeon who has just completed his residency at Hope Hospital and started operating as a full-time surgeon. Although initially Derek does the minimum to get by, he will soon become instrumental in the fight against GUILT and saving the world from medical terrorism. Players will also play as Nozomi Weaver, a highly skilled Japanese doctor in America on an exchange programme. Both Dr Styles and Dr Weaver have a special ability called the Healing Touch, but be warned that this is an ability which players can only use once per operation and it is quite difficult to activate so be sure to practice the activation symbol, a star drawn on the screen, beforehand. Derek can use the ability to increase his concentration and slow down time while Nozomi can increase a patient’s vitals when players are successfully healing a patient.

Prepare to face anything from routine medical procedures to life-threatening viruses. Whether it be extracting and resetting shattered pieces of bones, extracting glass or removing tumors, you will use the Wii remote like never before, to save lives! Although each operation does have unique challenges, players will learn basic surgical techniques which they can use to overcome the challenges in the operating room. Prepare to face pressure like never before, keeping an eye on the countdown timer and, more importantly, on your patient’s vitals.

The only complaint that I have with this game is that when you fail an operation (and to let you in on a little secret, you are destined to fail at least a few times) you have to scroll through the text that preceded the operation. This starts out as highly frustrating and ends up being downright annoying. Recently I discovered that pushing the minus button of the Wii Remote will fast-forward the text and then head straight back into attempting the operation. This also applies to the text during the operation. For this titbit of information which is guaranteed to save you hours of valuable game play (and your sanity), you gamers out there will be forever indebted to me. Apparently this is in the manual so it should not really count as a black mark against the game that I don’t read the manual before I play it.

All in all, Trauma Center: Second Opinion is a really innovative and entertaining game. It will challenge with its well thought out content that will see doctors operating during a flight’s turbulence and by the light of a torch, and will charm with its unique anime style characters and oft times haunting music. It is well worth checking out and sure to keep you coming back for more.

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Contributor:	Lisa

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