Trauma Center: Second Opinion review

Lou bought me a new game for the Wii called Trauma Center: Second Opinion. It’s a game about surgery which combines memory and skill. The memory comes in the form of a series of procedures you have to do i.e. make an incision, extract or drain, etc. The skill is like the board game Operation where you have to pull bits of glass out of a wound using forceps or re-arrange bone fragments.

It does help if you’ve had a few goes of Wii Play as you will be required to rotate and tilt items around. On the whole the on-line game review sites (IGN and GameSpot) got it right, this game is fab. You can feel the tension mounting as the clock ticks down and as the vitals of your patient falls. I also think your assistant yelling you when you screw up certainly adds to the atmosphere!

So far each operation lasts five minutes, I can tell you that you will feel drained in some of the later procedures. My favourite surgical tools are the forceps, which you have to squeeze the trigger button and main button on the Wiimote to activate. I would’ve chosen the defibrillator if it hadn’t been so hard to operate as pushing the nunchuck and Wiimote towards the screen to make contact was great fun.

My only gripe about the game is the limited dialogue and the copious amount of text to read rather than getting in voice actors. I can appreciate that by only having a few key phrases they could localize this game fairly quick and without great cost, but it makes the game feel dated, luckily there is a skip button which bypasses story line and operation briefing.

So far I’m usually completing an operation after failing once. Usually I work out what I’ve forgotten and remember it for the 2nd attempt. Which for difficulty level seems okay for me.

I’ve included a YouTube video that gives you an idea of gameplay below, you won’t see it if you’re using a news reader like bloglines or google reader. So view it directly on my website.