A remake of the first one that improves on it's intuitive controls and immersive story.
On the top screen will be fed your operation time limit which will range from 5 minutes to 10 depending on certain situations. Also displayed on the top screen will be the Operation Score which will determine your rank on the operation and comments from your assistant. The bottom screen displays the actual operation and the vital signs on your patient. If the vitals on the patient reaches zero, the game is over and you must restart. On the left and right sides of the bottom screen the tools for the operation are lined up vertically. These tools range from forceps, scapels, laser, magnifying glass, and much more. The game difficulty is set automatically to one setting; however, for slow players the game will punish you dearly if you wish to get high ranks. The operation itself is made so that it’s possible to beat for anyone but for players that seek challenges the rank of getting S will suit you well. Ranks are determined by bonus points in an operation, how well you perform a certain technique, how fast you perform the operation, and how many misses you made in an operation. All of these factor into the scoring which will rank you to be a Rookie Doctor, Specialist, Senior Surgeon, Expert Surgeon. Overall the difficulty is set so that nearly anyone can finish the game without many problems, though at times certain operations might be frustrating.
The presentation of the game of music and graphics quality in Under the Knife is actually presented in a way that it’s a bit of a drama in a doctor’s life except shown through an anime styled story. The story is told through text, however, the way the character speaks and present themselves in text brings out a great deal of character and personality. While a character is talking in text, the character themselves are shown above the text and present themselves in an emotional state that they are talking like. Such as if a doctor was angry, he’d start shouting in text and a picture of him yelling would show up above the text. The characters are, once again mentioned, in an anime style, though it’s not very finished and the characters don’t look dazzling the overall presentation of the characters do the job well of keeping the game together. Even though the story is text based, its very well thought out and goes into a suspense action feeling throughout the whole entire storyline. The music of Under the Knife is presented in a midi style file so it doesn’t have great detail in sound, however, the way the music is weaved into certain situations is just fascinating. The music score isn’t very diverse but the music fits into every conversation and dialogue of the characters and is also quite catchy. One year after Under the Knife was released for the DS, the Wii would launch soon after, and Atlus took advantage of the Wii’s motion sensing abilities and remade Trauma Center into a better game than it DS version. Trauma Center: Second Opinion was a remake of the version Under the Knife, and even though it was a remake this games extra content and polished music graphics and gameplay makes the game worth buying. Trauma Center: Second Opinion does a very well job of making a remake of the version much better than other game companies would. The reason being is that they finished and polished up much of Under the Knife’s unsatisfactory factors of the game such as midi music and unfinished character designs on the characters. The gameplay has changed quite a bit to also handle the Wii’s separate nun chuck and the one screen gameplay. Unlike the Under the Knife which utilized two screens, the Wii would use one screen therefore Atlus would have to change how the game worked a bit differently. The interface of the game changed by having the time, score, character, and the dialog all shoved into one screen. However, Atlus made a very smooth transition by making the operation section of the game fit in with all of the other minor details on the screen. The dialog of the character and the character who was talking were moved to the bottom right part of the screen and didn’t take up much space so that it wouldn’t interfere with surgery. The score and time was moved up to the top right corner of the screen and it was an easy way for people to glance up and see the operation time and pointage on the operation. Also the whole idea of selecting a certain tool by pointing with a Wiimote was taken out due to the new Wii nun chuck. All the medical tools were placed on each corner of the polygonal shape of the nun chuck joystick. The tools that represent each point and the tool currently used would show up on the bottom left screen. However, this is for beginning players as players start to memorize where each tool is. Second Opinion therefore gives a better gameplay interface than Under the Knife did by giving easy selection of the tools needed in an operation and having everything on one screen so you don’t have to go searching for something a long distance away from the operation screen. The music contains the same tune it did for Under the Knife except Atlus made it into a full mp3 file where it doesn’t sound like the same instrument playing a music. Rather they made the music more melodic by putting in multiple instruments that would suit the type of music being played. Such as, for a sad music a piano would be played and for a dramatic music a trumpet would be played. The polishing up on these music files gives a greater audio presentation on the game. The game also adds a bit more vocal sounds from the characters in the game and made it sound more emotional in the game rather leaving it a bit monotonous like the previous game. The exciting part about this version of the game is that they extended the game from where the previous game left and continued it with an additional episode. This game therefore gives more operations than it did in Under the Knife. Another very important addition in the game is that it also included difficulty settings so that you can change the difficulty anytime you think an operation is too hard. This option is very useful for new players into the game and helps later on for player who can’t handle certain operations.
Trauma Center takes place in the future where a new full-time surgeon named Derek Stiles begins to work at Hope Hospital. He learns the important values of being a doctor and learns that being a doctor is an even more serious job than he ever thought. However, through a mysterious encounter, Dr. Stiles is engaged with a new virus called GUILT, where the parasite starts harming patients from the inside until he or she dies. With the bio-terrorism out on the loose it seems like Derek has the motivation to stop this GUILT at all costs.
Both versions of Trauma Center are great games that give gamers a bit of insight into what it’s like to be in the medical life. The game is very innovative, unique, and challenging in various ways and brings about a new way to play games now. For people who like to accept challenges and find new ways to play, or take full advantage of a gaming system, both versions of this game would be a great addition to a gaming collection.