Trauma Center is an older DS game, one which I only recently picked up on the recommendation of that real life expert in the ways of slicing human flesh we call Tom. It's the sort of title that could only ever exist on the DS, as the thought of playing something like
this with a controller makes one feel a little repulsed, truth be told.
You play Derek Stiles, a reckless young surgeon who's tasked with carrying out operations which you embark upon via the DS' touch screen and stylus. The game doesn't necessarily require any previous medical knowledge, talking you through the procedures step by step, but I must say working in a hospital myself did help out a fair bit in some of the more gruelling later stages. More on these in a sec.
Suppositories
| As a virtual cadaver, Trauma Center is different and inventive, but far from perfect |
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The way the operations work is pretty darn sweet actually. The bottom screen provides a first person view of the operating table, with two toolbars down either side housing all your surgical apparatus.
These include everything from simple syringes and forceps, to ultrasound readers and laser cutters. Whether you wanna inject female hormones into some dude's coin purse, or just take a good old fashioned rectal temperature reading, it's simply a case of tapping whichever utensil you seek, then scribbling on the relevant body part to use it.
Okay, perhaps not. Trauma Center remains reasonably light and clean you see, avoiding the more mature sights of the human anatomy, not to mention the gorier elements of surgery too. You will still find yourself exposed to a wide variety of interesting conditions and treatments over the course of the game though.
Meanwhile the top screen is used to handle the storyline elements, and it's here where things become less pleasing for me. Very few operations go smoothly you see, so as crazy new twists and turns pop up mid-operation, various characters will appear along the top to talk you through what's going on and advise you on how to proceed.
This is all very Japanese in execution, with exaggerated manga characters who talk way too much, gushing volumes of incoherent text that unfortunately you can't skip, but I guess if nothing else it does garnish the game with a ton of style and colour that could otherwise have been kinda bland and sterile.
Let's Fighting Love
| Trauma Center's plot quite frankly blows, and is featured way too prominently |
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I guess the real problem is, this emphasis on character interactions and huge servings of dialogue just goes way overboard. As the game progresses, the operations almost take a back seat to a (really rather lame) storyline in particular, one that goes completely fucking leftfield at times and just way too far into supernatural territory for me.
Personally, I dug Trauma Center the most in its earlier missions, when rooted more firmly in reality. Simple procedures like removing glass from an arm and suturing up the wound prove to be fun, simple little bite sized operations that work beautifully on a handheld. It's a blast to drag and scribble on the touch screen, "interacting" with the human body in a completely fresh and different way than we're used to. These sections are where the game truly shines in my book, and I just wish it maintained that simplicity and sheer fun for the duration.
Alas, it doesn't. As the aforementioned storyline progresses and convolutes, the actual operations themselves do too. They become so complicated and so glaringly difficult in fact, it just completely disrupts the entire flow of the game.
There's one op for instance, where a patient has numerous bursting aneurysms which need to be injected, excised and repaired in one super fast motion. This is fine by itself, but when five pop up simultaneously and can burst in all but a moment's notice (spelling instant death, I might add), it requires speed and dexterity even a real-life surgeon would gawp at. It just all becomes way too frustrating for me.
This isn't helped by what feels to me, like the first and only real time the DS stylus has failed to respond as fast as it should be doing. I've never encountered it before in any other titles on the machine, but here in Trauma Center there are definite moments where my taps and drags don't register, which in these high pressure, split-second operations, can make or break your success. Not cool.
Easy as the Real Thing
| TC appears ripe for youngsters on the face of it, holding back on the gore and ER-style blood spurts. In terms of sheer difficulty though, only the most skilled surgeons need apply |
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True, while these super hard operations which the game tosses up in its latter half may annoy the piss out of you, at least when you
do pull 'em off it can be similarly bloody satisfying. The tension and pressure mounts up so damn much at times, you not only find yourself sweating all over your touch screen, but even starting to feel like someone's life is actually in your hands.
I just dunno if I want something so ridiculously hardcore and brutal on my DS is all. I wanna play my handheld when relaxing on the train ride home, unwinding after a long, arduous day's work. Content, if nothing else, in the fact that I don't have to return to the office for another eight hours of hell 'til the following morning. I wanna bask in relaxation while I fiddle with my DS. Hell, I might even slip out a cheeky little guff when no one's looking. It's my quiet time at the end of the day. My DS time.
Yet Trauma Center gets so bloody difficult and involving I'm just rarely in the mood for it to be honest. The arse cheeks remain firmly clenched when this mother fucker's on the go, let me tell ya.
I hate to say it, but I wish as a surgical game, this one had in fact just stuck to the more bland, slower-paced realism of a proper hospital, than the barmy, supernatural bullet time-tinged Japanese craziness we get instead. With more of a focus on the early fun and simplicity which it showcases so pleasingly well at the start - as opposed to that end game frustration it slowly mutates into later - Trauma Center could indeed have been one of the DS' finest. How unfortunate.
About three quarters in now, I'll certainly try to finish it, as it ain't a long game by any means. I must say though, my patience is most certainly being tested at this point, and if this were real-life, I would have most likely taken the nearest scalpel to the eye of that stuck-up hentai knock-off of a female nurse constantly barking orders in my ear.
Err, anyway...
I can still recommend this sucker for the more enjoyable operations found at the front-end of the game, but as a full-blown DS title, there are better and more worthy offerings available.
Still, that upcoming Wii remake could be fun...
(Pictures courtesy of
Atlus)