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.
