[Acronym=Trauma Center: Second Opinion]
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[Acronym=NTSC box art on the left, PAL box art on the right]
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Hello, and thanks for choosing to read this review on Trauma Center: Second Opinion, which is for the Nintendo Wii. This game is essentially a port of the Nintendo DS game “Trauma Center: Under the Knifeâ€. Think of it as a “New Play Control†title if you want. What makes this game different is the addition of a brand new sixth chapter (which takes after the events of the sixth chapter of the DS game if you’ve played it before), adds a second doctor with a new Healing Touch ability (more on that later), and also adds a few new operations and tools to the mix. Now, what are we waiting for… let’s begin the operat- I mean, review!
[Acronym=What is it]
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Trauma Center: Second Opinion (TC:SO), is a single player medical drama game. It features a decently sized story with a huge number of operations. It isn’t exactly 100% realistic, with some interesting medial fiction (if you wanna call it that) being tossed into the mix early on. It’s a port of the DS game, so it isn’t an entirely new game, but it’s still pretty darn good, and I’m writing this review to raise awareness of it. In fact, I played this game after playing a few of the later Trauma Center games.
[Acronym=Story]
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TC:SO follows a doctor called Derek Stiles, who has just finished his internship and is starting out to become a real doctor at a quaint little place that goes by the name of Hope Hospital. With his mentor Greg Kasal, and nurse Mary Fullman, everything seems to be going along swimmingly. That is, until Mary announces she is leaving the hospital because of her husband’s recent job requirements. Derek is almost shattered, but curious as to who his replacement nurse will be.
The nurse in question arrives late on the day she’s due to show up, because she got held up at an accident which she so magnificently handled, assisting with the emergency teams on site. She apologises, and introduces herself as Angie Thompson. Although Derek and Angie do not get along well at first, having a huge argument when Derek’s carelessness leads to the worsened condition of one his patients, the two must work side by side when a late night accident sends an overflow of patients towards the hospital. When all hope seems lost, Derek doesn’t lose faith, unleashing a power that causes time to slow down, known as the Healing Touch.
As Derek learns to control his newfound power, with the guidance of his colleagues and nurse, another danger silently lies, waiting to awaken. This threat… is known as GUILT; a strange virus that comes in various strains, and is believed to be manmade. Derek witnesses this horrible terror firsthand when treating a previously suicidal young girl in Hope Hospital. This disease heralds the beginning of medical terrorism, and together, Derek and Angie are wound up in the middle of it amongst the largest organisations in the world, treating patients, one at a time, and saving lives with the Healing Touch.
[Acronym=Gameplay]
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The game goes like this: You start up an episode, watch the first bit of story, brief for an operation, perform the operation, complete it, and watch the final bit of story for that episode and then you complete the episode. There are six chapters, that each contain from around eight to eleven episodes. Sometimes you’ll get episodes that are strictly story as well, but they are not frequent, and can be relaxing to see when you are stressed out from a recent operation.
During story, you just read the story. During an operation is when the fun kicks in. Using the Wii remote and nunchuk play style, you point at the screen to aim where you will use your tools, and use the control stick on the nunchuk to select one of eight tools. If you wanted to use the scalpel, for example, you would tilt your nunchuk to the left to select that tool, then point your Wii remote and press A or B to start using that tool. That’s the main gist of controls, anyway.
I like to think of this game as an arcade kind of thing, and that’s mostly because this game has a scoring system. With each successful move, you score an OK, Good, or Cool, depending on how well you did whatever it is you were doing. If you do a poor job of it, you get a Bad. And if you miss completely, you get a Miss. Along with worrying about how well you’re performing, you need to worry about the actual patient’s vitals as well. The vitals reach a maximum of 99, and a minimum of… well, 0, AKA they’re dead. Certain elements, like tumours, lacerations, aneurysms, and haemorrhaging will all lower the vitals down every so seconds. Luckily, you have two tools capable of boosting vitals (the stabilizer, which works a charm, and the antibiotic gel, which is can be used to halt the damaging effect of lacerations while only slightly boosting vitals). There are a heap of different things to treat, though the main problems you’ll be having are with the GUILT; seven different kinds of “bosses†that all do crazy things, from creating lacerations from inside organs to trying to calcify an organ and render it useless. Each GUILT has its own treatment plan, which you are generally eased into.
With each operation (excluding a few of the first ones, obviously), you have access to a final tool, the Healing Touch. By holding down Z on the nunchuk and B on the Wii remote and drawing a star on screen, you can activate your healing touch, which will ultimately slow down time, giving you a huge opportunity to turn the tables on whatever it is that’s troubling you. As an added bonus with this remake, a second doctor has been added who has a slightly different Healing Touch. Rather than slowing down time, this doctor’s Healing Touch boosts the patient’s vitals whenever you get an OK, Good or Cool. A cool will boost the vitals much more than an OK does, too.
At the end of each operation, you get your rank, with four special bonuses like “No mistakesâ€, “No Healing Touchâ€, etc. Get all four bonuses, along with a really good operation score (obtained from heaps of Cools), and you get a really good operation rank to brag about.
[Acronym=You'll be lucky if you ever get the "No Mistakes" bonus in the later operations]
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[Acronym=Sometimes you'll get an A rank for a good performance, other days you'll get a C rank because you suck. I mostly get C ranks because I suck]
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The first screenshot shows all of the scoring, based on vitals and whatnot. The second screenshots shows the operation rank. The ranks range from C, B, A, S and XS
[Acronym=Sometimes you'll get an A rank for a good performance, other days you'll get a C rank because you suck. I mostly get C ranks because I suck]
The first screenshot shows all of the scoring, based on vitals and whatnot. The second screenshots shows the operation rank. The ranks range from C, B, A, S and XS
If you’re worried about being really dodgy at this game, don’t worry! There is an Easy, Normal and Hard difficulty for each operation at any time. Easy mode is really easy, trust me. Boosting vitals is so simple in Easy mode, you really shouldn’t have much trouble at all. I’ve done a playthrough on Hard, and only ever had to resort to Easy mode once (that’s mostly because I wanted to keep on going with the story though).
[Acronym=NintenDan's Thoughts]
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Why is this game so good? Because it’s really cool. The added doctor, who goes by the name of Nozomi Weaver, is really cool. For each chapter, you are able to play as her for one operation (kinda dodgy, but meh). You get to see an all new, interesting side story to the game while playing through the old classic operations that were featured on the DS.
Another great thing about this game is that they’ve changed a few things. They introduced a much better saving system that allows for better replayability, and the graphics are overall improved and look nice and fancy. The operations aren’t too gory either, in case you’re wondering.
[Acronym=The nurse here is Mary Fullman (AKA the nurse at the very start), so this is one of the more realistic operations you'll see in the game]
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See? Not gory at all! Kind of...
See? Not gory at all! Kind of...
There’s also a final challenge for those that complete the game as well. These are known as the “X Missionsâ€, and are super hard versions of all seven strains of GUILT. They are frustrating, but also pretty fun to master (I’ve done all seven operations successfully with both doctors, heh).
[Acronym=I don't think she's THAT annoying]
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Thankfully, Angie isn't around when you're completing the X Missions
Thankfully, Angie isn't around when you're completing the X Missions
The music is pretty darn catchy, a whole bunch of remixes from the DS version as you’d expect, with a few additional tracks. My personal favourite is the final operation theme, which I’ll put up here just because it’s so darn good.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mhSl07XsfmI
I really liked this game. It was a hoot to play by myself, and although co-op featured in some of the later titles of the series, I never utilised that feature, preferring to play the game by myself, maybe with the odd person watching me from time to time. The X missions were a hoot to get through, and the story was pretty darn good if I do say so myself. Having played the DS version prior to the Wii one, I would say you should give this a shot, although the overall changes between the two aren’t huge, you get an additional chapter of new stuff, along with a slightly tweaked story (and it’s on a bigger screen, what more could you want?!)I give Trauma Center: Second Opinion for Wii…
8 out of 10 Golden NintenDans!
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