Assuming the role of Derek Stiles, a rookie surgeon, your task in Trauma Center is to save the world. Blessed with a unique gift only known as the "healing touch", which gives you extraordinary speed and concentration when performing a surgery, you'll take on a group of terrorists who've brought upon a mysterious, yet life-threatening virus called GUILT upon the world.
Of course, as a surgeon, you won't have to take on these people head on, Street Fighter-style. Instead, each attack from the terrorists is sent to you in the form of a patient. The injured parts are revealed as close-ups on the touch screen, while you use a host of items to salvage the situation within a time limit. Obviously, the cases get more and more complicated as the game progresses, and saving the lives of these patients becomes truly a race against time, as well as the strange ailments that befall upon them.
In essence, Trauma Center requires you to perform surgeries after surgeries. While this may sound a little repetitive, you probably won't even notice it in practice. The game is paced so quickly, you'd barely have any time to think about what to do next, and before you know it, you're on the job again. Sharp instincts, quick reflexes and a lot of patience are what will get you through the game. But if you're into unveiling the mystery behind GUILT and its perpetuator, you wouldn't be shortchanged too. The game did a good job of making a simple story interesting, and despite some insanely difficult to perform surgeries (and many lost lives), you'll get great satisfaction out of every soul you save.
Saving lives is not exactly rocket science in Trauma Center. It basically involves selecting an item from the icons on the sides of the touch screen, and applying them to the wounded areas. For example, you can suture a wound by stroking your stylus in a zigzag fashion over a cut, or remove a foreign object from the bodies by lifting it in the correct direction by holding it and slowly dragging it away with the stylus. Your assistant will also give you instructions on the top screen on what to do, so you ought to have some ideas on how to make things work like a real surgeon, even though you may never emulate the handwriting. However, as the action gets thicker and faster, you may simply find the advice being a bother rather than help.
And then they give you some cases when no one else is around to advise you.
Such is the pressure of Trauma Center, I'd only recommend it to gamers who have a strong heart (no pun intended). If you're not into looking at wounds and lacerations, the game won't shock you by the quite unrealistic graphics (for the bodies and blood and what have you the nurses, I mean, people, are generally well drawn ). But it does have the potential of making you want to throw your DS towards the wall when you fail to save yet another a life, and that's when the real problem comes in. The game is very difficult to play, and as I mentioned, you'll need a lot of patience to engage it. But at least it tries to help you concentrate on the task by toning down the audios, which may not be a plus point for some, but definitely one for me.
And, if after all that I wrote, you still think you've what it takes to seek the truth behind GUILT, you should immediately turn off that episode of ER, and make an appointment with Trauma Center: Under the Knife.
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Of all the games on the DS, no other third party title has made this good of use of the stylus and touch screen than Atlus' Trauma Center: Under the Knife. Playing as a young, inexperienced surgeon, you use the stylus to cut, suture, bandage, and more in an effort to save your patients. You have a certain amount of time to do these tasks, as well as keeping an eye on your patient's vitals while doing such surgeries like removing glass shards and re-starting the heart of a flatliner. There's a storyline to Trauma Center, but it's only here as a way to make the game move along. The highlight of the game and what makes it worth picking up is the fact that this is one of the titles that makes the DS the best portable system out there today. The level of interactivity is inituitive, but the game loses steam because it is ultimately too short. After completeing each surgery, you'll be able to re-play them to boost your surgeon rating, which is a nice little bonus in itself. All in all, Trauma Center: Under the Knife is a definite must check out for all DS owners, but keep in mind that the game isn't for everyone.Best Deals for Trauma Center: Under the Knife - Nintendo DS
I almost didn't buy this game since it just sounded weird, but I did buy it. It is weird. It is also very fun to figure out the what to do and keep up the pace so you didn't kill people. The operations are really great, don't worry it doesn't really look like the inside of a body at all. There are two detracting points to this game. One, the art just isn't that good, this may be a blessing as it would be pretty gross otherwise. Two, there is two much talking and down time between operations. The operations are really fun and interesting, but then you have to get back to the story. The story was pretty boring to me as you don't get to make any choices you just read it. Overall, I really like this game, at least the operations, you can speed up the talking so you don't actually have to read. Only the most squimish will have a problem with it.Honest reviews on Trauma Center: Under the Knife - Nintendo DS
Trauma Center: Under the Knife is a novel idea for the Nintendo DS. It's creative and it can be fun at times, but its got major issues bogging it down. The most previously mentioned of which are its sometimes doggy controlls and extreme difficulty. First of all, the difficulty curve is all over the place. This game bounces between having operations that are simple enough to get on the first time and then will switch to missions that are on the "this is impossible" difficulty level. Some of these super hard operations almost seem like they want you to fail. I base this on the fact that on operations I struggled many times to get through I would get a high grade at the end of the mission. I didn't perform it skillfully at all, but it seem like the game knows that keeping the patient alive is a monumental task in and of itself. Adding to this is the dogy controls for some of the tools. The Magnifying Glass is a pain to use. Not only must you draw the circle precisely, but quickly too. Sewing closed wounds is also hard. Sometimes the game will register it and sometimes it won't. As the patients life meter drops quickly when you have a bleeding wound, this can be the difference between success and failure on some missions.Despite the off the charts difficulty on the most the of missions, some of the easier ones are very fun. It's quite fun to go back and perform them again in challenge mode to get a higher grade.
Even if you find the super-hard parts of Trauma Center to be a blast, I doubt any but the most dedicated of virtual surgeons are going to play through the entire game a second time. For one thing, this is a very talky game. It's fourty or so missions are spliced between a liberal amount of story. It's not a particularly interesting story, but there is more of it than most handheld RPGs have. Secondly, it is so annoying when the nurses stop you in the middle of the operation to yammer on about something. As most of this mission will require multiple tries, you'll soon feel like telling them to shut up because you already know what do.
In the end, for all its novelty value, Trauma Center is just an average game. It can be really fun, but at others it almost feels like it wants to drive your blood pressure to point that you'll have to visit the real life trauma center.
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