Totally Original, challenging, and a blast to play with a friend.
Ill start by saying that I LOVE this game. I have been playing it with my girlfriend on co-operative mode and we have been having a blast with it. You start the game by being introduced to the two main characters (played by both you and your partner) and after a little story and introduction, I was thrown right into surgery. Before each surgery there is a bit of dialogue told through still drawings of the characters. Thankfully, all of the dialogue is very nicely voice-acted, however, some of it is a bit silly and could have been cut-but its all easily fast-forwarded if you read faster than they talk.
Next, you are sent to a briefing room in which a nurse will give you the low-down on the surgery you are about to perform. Here is where the nurse will tell you the goals of the surgery, special conditions, and what complications to look out for. Now your ready to slice open your patient and begin!
The graphics during the surgeries are not grotesque or very realistic looking. Instead, the artists went for a clear and simple presentation-a relief to me personally. I think they could have upped the graphical presentation of the bones/muscles etc a little more than they did. The graphics work well for the game, though. Ok so the surgeries themselves are a blast! You have the use of your left hand (nun-chuck controller) and right hand (Wiimote) as a surgeon. The nun-chuck serves as a selector to choose which tool you will use (forceps, scalpel, needle etc…). The wiimote is where the action is, you slice/suture/drain/reconstruct bones etc with the wiimote. It takes a steady hand but it works very well.
During surgeries you are tasked to perform everything from reconstructing broken bones (placing them back together in a puzzle fashion) to replacing a pace-maker (disconnecting and removing the old one and installing the new one). These surgeries vary in their difficulty, some of them I found to be extremely difficult while others posed no problems for me at all. The difficulty settings help if you are stuck on a certain surgery, just knock down the difficulty down a bit. There are a lot of factors which contribute to the challenging nature of this game, one is a steady hand (it's a must) two is there are often time limits on the surgeries (if you don't finish in a certain amount of time your patient dies) three there is little room for mistakes (a few mistakes and you've killed your patient) and four you must learn the steps involved in performing each process (you cant just jump in and take out a tumor, you have to follow the Powell Procedure in order to complete the task).
So, naturally, its very rewarding when you do complete the surgery. During the surgery you are graded on each action you perform (a Good or Cool or Bad will pop up) to let you know how you are doing at performing the necessary tasks. At the end of the surgery (once completed) you will be graded based on your performance (A Specialist, B Senior Surgeon, C Resident or something like that).
The coolest part of Trauma Center though, and the part which has me coming back for more is how unique and creative this game is. It is such a perfect use of the motion sensing technology on the Wii. It just makes me hope that more games as original and fun as this one is are on the horizon.