Trauma Center: Second Opinion

After a long bout with a highly infectious strain of intense gaimasidus, I came out on top, beating the urge to play video games for a while and also beating this game. Trauma Center: Second Opinion has whipped me into a stupor, shot my nerves, and made my retina detach from the back of my eyes. But you know what? I loved it.

The story and presentation are pretty good. You play as a rookie doctor who is poised to run up the ranks. Extremely original, I know, but the story line is pretty good for what it is. Instead of the developers just throwing random patients at you with tumors or polyps, you actually get some back story that eventually falls into an overlying arch that goes through most of the game. The presentation of these events compliments the story and gets you excited to battle what rests inside of your patients, whether that be shards of glass or mutated viruses that run amok on someone’s heart. The menus system in simple but effective. You can get right into the game quickly and choose which operation you want with ease. The story is driven by static, hand drawn anime panels that give you the situation at hand and rely your character’s emotions about what’s going on. There’s little flair here, but it gets the job done.

Like in the short description I made about this game a while back, the game is intense, pitting you against yourself and how steady you are with a fake scalpel. Out of all the Wii games I’ve played so far, this game definitely mirrors your exact movements the best. Pinpoint accuracy throughout. If you screw up, it’s your fault, and trust me, you’ll be pissed off at yourself more than once for mis-shooting the laser or scalpelling a little too fervently. Speaking of tools, you get the standard doctor fare: scalpel, forceps, drainy tube thing, sonar dealy, laser beam, stimulants to help vitals, sutures, and some gel goo stuff that disinfects and heals at the same time. (The game is played a little in the future, when such things are not uncommon.) You’re able to switch between all of these things on the fly, and in most missions you’ll need to be adept at moving between one tool and the other or the patient’s dead. In some of the later missions you’ll wish you had your own nurse to dab your ever sweating brow. The game gets all up in your face with no remorse. Get used to that.

All told this game rocks. I loved it through and through, even though there were times when I wanted to strangle beings weaker than me because of the difficulty of the game. It’s not for the feint of heart. You’ll curse. You’ll stomp your feet. You better wear that wrist strap or you might send the remote flying through the wall in rage. But when you complete that mission you’ve been on for an hour, you’ll jump for joy at the accomplishment, passing cigars to anyone in the room. Simply, every Wii owner should at least try this game for a rewarding challenge.