Wii60 Offical Europe Release Review - Trauma Center: Second Opinion
Platform: Nintendo Wii Developer: Atlus
Genre: Puzzle Players: 1
Reviewed by: Andy Edwards
When Trauma Center finally released in the UK and Europe a few weeks ago, I was excited to finally be able to get the chance to play and review the game. It had been eight to nine months since I had seen it released in the US though having played it on the DS; I wasn’t too bothered about the delays, and I figured I’d write up a review when it finally released in the UK. Having sat through five or six delays though, I was getting pretty tired, even uninterested!
It arrived in the mail a few days ago and I instantly put it into my Wii and fired it up. I was instantly impressed with the way it looked on my HDTV. Having been disappointed with the way some Wii games looked via component, I was pleasantly surprised. The usual
problems that occur are things looking blurred, tons of aliasing and appearing pretty washed out. While the game obviously isn’t graphically demanding, things look crisp, colourful and wonderfully presentable.
The sound that exists in the game isn’t quite as glorious however. The light sound effects that exist in the game get repetitive pretty fast, especially when you hear the nurse say “Doctor!” in the same tone each time she has something to say. The operation soundtrack is also nothing to write home about, it seems to be a very short music piece on loop and its not even something you’re able to enjoy. Having performed many operations in the game, I finally decided for the first time in a long time to disabled the sound in a game and listen to some music instead as I played it through. This is definately a shame as I personally consider sound to be a major factor in how I enjoy a gaming experience.
If you don’t know the premise of Trauma Center, then here’s a quick breakdown for you - You’re a surgeon, you have to heal people by cutting them open and dealing with their various problems. Of course there are a few twists, you also have the ‘healing touch’ which can help you out during tricky surgeries.
You’re not the only person in the game though. There’s a whole cast of characters that are there to support the development of the story. While some of the characters are fairly obvious, like an assistant nurse, another doctor and the head of the hospita; there are a few that offer a bit more interest in the game. For instance you may operate on a character one day, learn more about them and watch a small sub plot unravel before you. This is all very interesting, but most of it is there for one thing only - to get you into more surgeries. Due to this the sub- stories have a fairly obvious way of presenting themselves, the main plot however may offer you a few suprises.
Skipping through the story with the minus button (I’ve played this before remember? On the DS?) I got to my first operation which I was fairly familiar with. Here’s where the issues began from my point of view. Yes, the game has always been tough - getting a perfect cut on the DS required a lot of concentration and a steady hand. Getting that perfect cut on the Wii is by all means of the word - impossible. It seems that no matter how much I tried, and even towards the end of the game I could not get a decent cut. This probably could have been solved by adding a bit of leeway into how accurate your cut has to be with a pointer that you’re not physically pressing against anything. The rest of the operation problems are fairly simple to overcome with the Wii remote, such as stitching, laser burning and applying bandages. The only other real problem I had with the wii controls was drawing the star in order to activate your power. Because you’re not actually drawing anything physically, it can feel a bit removed and you can even forget the last direction you drew a line in. After a while I got used to this, but something just doesn’t feel right about it.
There were however a few inconsistencies with the controls as a whole, not including performing the actual operation. One of these 
problems I found was the inability to select different instruments with the Wii remote itself. During my first operation it took me about five minutes to realise I had to use the nunchuck analogue to select these. Don’t get me wrong, this wasn’t hard to get used to or debilitating as a player - but its highly unnecessary when you consider that I should be able to select them with the Wii remote just as easily. As well as this I found myself pointing towards certain options like difficulty and finding that I couldn’t access these by just pointing to them, I had to use the Nunchuck again. The game certainly would have would have benefited by having consistencies in the interface, it seems odd to me that some options were accessibly via the Wii remote and others were not.
The missions start off fairly ‘easy’ by the game’s standards. You’re presented with a few patients that have easy problems to deal with and it basically steps up the difficulty slowly, with problems requiring more accuracy and faster reaction times as well as adding more problems to deal with per operation. All this is presented pretty well, and you don’t really feel like the game is thrusting you into the deep end straight away.
The interesting thing though is how some of the tools have other functions depending on the situation. You have to figure out which one to use for the specfic problem, but sometimes you’ll be picking out tumours with the tweezers as well as pulling arteries together with them. This adds a nice little variety to the game and demands that you pay attention to how a situation should be dealt with.
There are also some extra missions at the end of the game, they are a nice touch but there was nothing that really gripped me as someone who played through it originally on the DS.
The verdict
If you’re playing the game the first time through on the Wii, I can imagine it would be a fun and new experience, but you’d still have the issues with some of the control decisions that made it into the final game. All in all its a fun game, that simply has a few too many flaws. From the soundtrack to the control inconsistencies, I can’t help but feel that there wasn’t much effort put into this DS to Wii port other than to get the game out there.
This would have been acceptable as a launch game, but frankly for anyone in Europe, this isn’t a launch game anymore. This game has been released just around the turn of the second generation of Wii games and some of the problems at exist simply shouldn’t. Pick it up if you’ve never experienced it, but make sure you have a decent mix tape ready to accompany your play through the game, you might as-well set your tv to mute.
+Pros
Looks damn good
Operations tend to be generally fun and intersting.
Bonus content is a nice addition
-Cons
Awful audio
Control inconsistencies
Feels like a launch game
Final Score
