Trauma Team

I have never played a Trauma Center game coming into this and I had a bit of a guilty interest, I was almost ashamed that I wanted to pick up this game and play it. I’m glad to say that this is game was everything i expected it to be and more.

The story is told from the perspective of 6 doctors of different specializations. This is interesting because you really get the full story of the patients in some cases from the first responders through surgery. Each doctor has their own game play type, some more fun than others but I’ll get into that in a bit. The game is broken up into episodes for each doctor, and you can play them in any order. Well, that’s not exactly true… you can play any doctor’s story line but the next episode in that story line unlocks as you complete the previous. So, you can for example, play through all the paramedic missions before doing any of the other missions and create a sort of pulp fiction-esque style of story, or you can play through them as they would in the timeline of the events. I chose to play closer to the timeline just to keep the mission variety fresh, I didn’t really want to get stuck with a bunch of the less interesting game types at the end. The story is pretty well flushed out, and told in a manga style still frame, with the occasional simple animation. The voice acting was much better than I was expecting. The characters themselves all show some form of development, and each have their own personality and charm even though they are all very familiar.

Now I think it would make the most sense to break each of these doctors down individually and talk about their game play.

CR-S01 (yes that’s his name) [Surgery]: This character is a quiet kid, who was apparently involved in some sort of criminal event and he is released into custody of resurgence hospital to perform surgery, it seems he is on the path of redemption, definitely a familiar character. This game play will be very familiar to fans of the franchise, you are removing everything from tumors, to steel beams, monitoring vitals and stitching holes… Probably the funnest of the game modes.

Maria Torres [First Response]: Here you play the role of a first responder who thinks she is better than everyone else and feels the need to take control of everything at the scene. This makes for some interesting game play, you basically get a trimmed down version of surgery when you patch wounds, set bones with braces, stop bleeding with tourniquets. The trick is you often have 3 or 4 patients to deal with, and monitor the vital signs of each. It makes for some very challenging, fast paced action, and probably my favorite game mode. (coop)

Hank Freebird [Orthopedics]: The manual describes Hank as a “gentle giant”, it’s a fitting description but quite cliché. I didn’t care for this game mode all that much, mostly because it requires a steady hand, and that is something I simply don’t have. You’re basically tracing lines that are on the screen for the most part. There are also drilling, screwing and hammering type activities. I’m not sure if the precision issues I was having was a me problem or a game problem, but it was tricky for me to keep on the line, and to rotate the wiimote a the right angle and what not.

Tomoe Tachibana [Endoscopy]: The heiress of a ninja clan who is trying to make it on her own! Honor!  very stereotypical, but she is a very likable character and her butler, Hanzou actually provided a bit of comic relief for me. The endoscopy game play wasn’t all that fun, but was good for adding variety. you basically end up pushing this camera through the patient looking for hemorrhaging and other strange growths. you have a set of tools for dealing with those, all the while not touching the walls. It’s not bad, but it’s a pretty slow pace.

Gabriel Cunningham [Diagnosis]: This guy is pretty much House, well, not quite as evil, but definitely “rules be damned” mentality. I think this game play is pretty much how you might expect. You have conversations with your patient, and you do physical exams by click on areas of the person that exhibit symptoms like for instance their eyes may be yellow indicating jaundice, or there may be blood coming from their noses or on their hands after the cough. After you identify a bunch of symptoms you take it to your office and compare your symptoms with a list of potential causes, which usually determines what you look for in the forthcoming x-ray CT or MRI scans at which time you play a game of what is different between 2 images type game. I wouldn’t want to do these one after another as they’re not all that fun, and they are quite time consuming, but it was an interesting change in pace in small doses.

Naomi Kimishima [Forensics]: This one has a bit of an x-files feel too it, since she… well… receives phone calls from the dead. They actually did something really neat with the wiimote here that I don’t want to spoil, but it was one of the most immersive experiences I’ve ever had with the wiimote so far. clever… anyway, this plays sort of similar to the diagnostics game play in that you find clues on the body, and belongings, and at the scene using typical CSI tools. Once you have all the clues you start putting them together to create “solid evidence” until you have enough to solve the case. These often take forever to ‘solve’ sometimes up to an hour, they’re not particularly fun and can get frustrating if there is 1 clue that you missed somewhere and trying to figure out where that is is frustrating. I’d be a little happier with these if they took half the time.

Each doctor has (give or take) 6 episodes, in the main story, and then 1 more of each doctor in a follow up story. My first play through took me about 20 hours or so. Half of the game modes have coop portions that you can play with a friend, making it a bit more interesting and gives you an excuse to yell at each other. Despite the slower/less fun game play modes, I had a really good time with the game… in fact I couldn’t put it down all weekend. I really appreciated the freedom of progression, if I didn’t feel like doing an endoscopy mission, I could choose to play some other game, which created some interesting reveals in the plot. I really don’t know ~who~ this game is for exactly but I can highly recommend the rental. If you’re familiar with the franchise, there likely isn’t enough good parts to warrant the purchase but its definitely worth checking out, and I’m definitely glad I picked it up.

I mentioned about a month ago now that this spring has been unlike any I’d seen in terms of quality video game releases, most notably for me (and probably slightly different than many of the media outlets) Skate 3, Prince of Persia, and Super Mario Galaxy (review will be available when I finish it… suffice to say I’m really enjoying it). It seems from the e3 announcements that this trend is going to continue next year with most of the major releases (Killzone 3, Gears 3, Bulletstorm, Deus Ex, Red Faction, Ghost Recon, Rage, Dead Space 2, Brink, is that enough?) happening after the holidays with the exception of GT5. I think this is mostly likely related to the release of Kinect and Move in the fall… and I don’t know if it’s as sinister as this, but I wouldn’t be surprised if the ‘triple A’ titles (at the very least the exclusives) were intentionally pushed back in an effort to starve us into making these hardware purchases. Since we’re on the topic, Kinect coverage impressed me more than I thought it would, and perhaps more importantly for Microsoft it thoroughly impressed my girlfriend. Impressed to the point of her being ready to pre-order it before the price has even been determined, and frankly I don’t think it would matter to her what it cost as long as she could also get her hands on dance central (kudos to Harmonix for selling a peripheral on Microsoft’s behalf). I think she was disappointed the DDR never made an appearance at my place, and will not sit by idly while it happens again.

As it stands today, there is really only 5 or 6 games on the home console (I add this because Star Craft 2, and Dragon Quest IX are on the immediate future agenda) I REALLY want to play before February. [Crysis 2, The Last Guardian (hasn't been pushed back yet... I expect it will be since there was no news at e3 about it..), Fallout: New Vegas, Rockband 3, the others are escaping me at the moment)]

Harkening back to afore mentioned post, I have played most everything on that list that I still intend to at this point apart from Trauma Team (shush already, I want to play it), and Alan Wake, both are actually en route via amazon as I type… so the question is, what am I going to do for the next 8 months or so before we get another hectic stretch like that. I’ve been finding shallow comfort in xbox DLC that I’ve missed during my time away from the console. ‘splosion man, shadow complex, and trials hd (I LOVE TRIALS GAMES!), but once those are gone what am I going to do for games? suggestions? Best case scenario I find an MMO to sink 1000 hours into but seeing as I’ve had my fill of World of Warcraft it seems, and I’ve tried pretty much every other major MMO that came out as they came out and they weren’t that interesting ergo I think it’s unlikely. Thanks to EA and Steam sales last week, I have decided to give Mass Effect, and Dragon Age another chance. Maybe in a less cluttered release schedule, I will be able to devote enough time for the games to ‘take off’ in a way that I find compelling enough to see through…

So yea… I’m not at all comfortable with the lack of games coming how am I going to spend my free time… trophy hunting?

Red Dead Demption

I was going to pass on this title, I had had my fill of sandbox games after Assassin’s Creed 2, and Just Cause 2, but after reading a lot of reviews that put this in the 5 star and high 90 scores I figured I would be doing myself a disservice to pass up a game that is so highly regarded. Was I fooled by the media? or is this game really that good?

The story is told in much the same way as in Grand Theft Auto, through dialog while enroute to some form of blood bath, with the occasional cut scene (more so early on while they set the stage). Rockstar is truly the master of story telling in sandbox games… the atmosphere in this game is extraordinarily convincing the characters feel authentic even the most ridiculous of them (more on that in a bit), are believable in their design, mannerisms and voice work (mostly). In this sense, and as the reviews scores from the major outlets suggest, this game should be a benchmark for those who follow them. They also do some interesting things towards the end… honestly, I felt like I was at the end 3 distinct times, only to be presented with more quest markers which sort of frustrated me at the time, but I do understand why they did it this way, it was pretty well executed at the end too… (hard to talk about without spoiling so I won’t, suffice to say it’s worth playing it out if you’re like me and were thinking of quiting there).

You travel between US and Mexico but not a whole lot changes environmentally between the two, aside from one little snow area at the top of the map. I was definitely tired of the scenery by the time I was finished. It was sort of neat seeing the technology creeping into the world as would have been the case in that era, it was a subtle but nice touch. I still could have done with a lot more variety given the size of the map.

There are some crazy folk in Rockstar’s interpretation of the old west… the delusional, cannibals, necrophiliacs, as well as run of the mill swindlers, all make an appearance here (amongst others)… It clearly adds some color to the drab dull palatte of the western setting. Over the top is a bit of an understatement, but each of the people you meet are clearly unique and everyone seems to have some dirt on them, if not the kind that comes off with soap then some other brand of filth. The odd part is that the ‘hero’ is compelled to help these folks regardless…what is interesting about helping these folks who can be considered little more than fiends is that Marston’s patience for them does eventually grow thin and it’s evident in the voice work and dialog. The people you meet are also served with a thick thick helping of cliché for instance, a drunk named Irish, and a poor fella (perhaps feller would be more appropriate here?) with tourettes called shaky, I won’t spoil them all but even with the cliché they are still charming in their own way, and you actually build the semblance of a relationship with them in a sense. In my eyes this is the greatest strength of this game, big kudos to Rockstar in this regard. The unfortunate part is that it really feels like you’re introduced to people and you help them along their own little sub-plot, while they entice you with their carrot on a stick to progress your own story, which inevitably leads too someone new and a new sub-plot. Again it doesn’t suit Marston’s character to play around with these folks who are clearly leading him on when he is so swift to plug a random guy for putting the beat down on a hooker. I’m reminded of a Rev Rant (this one specifically) when playing this game.

There is always something going on, someone who needs help, for instance, someones wagon, horse, or wife has been stolen, or perhaps it’s just a whore (literally) trying to steal your horse that requires some immediate and swift retribution. I am an easily distracted player, so the amount of spontaneous quests that come up is a bit overwhelming, and my tendency to react to any blip on the map, or critter crossing my path, is getting to me and the animations to go through the motions of getting on and off the horse, skinning and looting kills and hogtying folks is all starting to feel too slow and tedious. I learned in the end that most of these blips should be ignored entirely, it pains me to do it… it’s just less painful than actually doing the task.

There are “Ambient Challenges” in Sharpshooting, Hunting, Survivalist (finding herbs), and treasure hunting. All of which are pretty self explanatory, the highlight for me was treasure hunting… with genuine treasure maps that gives you clues as to where the shallow pile of rocks that has some sweet loot hiding within. This made me laugh, you literally move 2 rocks and there is treasure inside. Its actually challenging and kind of neat. It’s the first time I ever whipped out the map that came with a game to try to figure some stuff out (PS it worked!). The rest of it felt more like make busy work because I was actively seeking them out as opposed to getting them passively as their title suggests… my bad I guess.

Combat feels good with snap targeting (your cross-hairs lock to targets chest when you pull up your weapon, from there it is a simple nudge to get a head shot), and dead-eye (bullet-time meets mark & execute) mechanics work well, and you need them when you’re being swarmed with baddies. The only thing that I’d probably change is that the dead-eye meter refills so quickly, that it almost feels infinite. I might have died 5 times in the 30 or so hours I spent with the game. The horse riding is tedious at first (rhythmically pressing ‘x’ to spur your horse to move forward), but then it gets to be second nature, and you don’t notice it so much. You also have fast travel from a camp you can build from your inventory nearly anywhere on the map, odd that you can’t do that from safe houses but whatever.

All you really need to know about this game I guess is that if you can get into a sandbox game like GTA, and that formula works for you then there is a lot to enjoy here. Personally I was hoping this game had been some kind of departure from the traditional sandbox formula, and it simply doesn’t, and overall was disappointed with it because of it. Apart from that however, this is a very, very good game and certainly something for the folks at Rockstar to build on, and something for competitors to try to copy.