Trauma Center: Under the Knife for Nintendo DS Reviews by Gamers

Trauma Center: Under the Knife is clearly one of those "crazy" ideas spawned out of a design team's brainstorm session held back when Nintendo revealed the Nintendo DS hardware. The whole "virtual doctor" concept isn't new -- games like Mindscape's Life and Death on the PC and Imagic's Microsurgeon on the old-school systems take the cake as the first of their kind, and everyone's tinkered around the classic Operation board game back in childhood. Though games of similar concept have made it to market in the past, Trauma Center on the Nintendo DS is still one of the most original game designs on the handheld system. Don't let the science fool you; this game's fast-paced action that fully utilizes touch screen control. It's a little repetitive in places with the same 10 or so procedures used over and over again. But its enormous challenge level will keep you on your toes, and the fact that it's so unlike anything else on the system makes Trauma Center hard not to recommend for DS owners.

Good ol' Dr. Stiles thinks he's hot stuff in the operating room, but boy is he in for a rude awakening when he tries cutting up a few patients. Saving lives ain't easy. Trauma Center: Under the Knife generalizes the trials and tribulations of being a operating room surgeon, giving players control over slicing up a variety of ailing victims in the attempt to fix their sickening problems. So the deal is simple: each chapter is essentially a patient at one of the several different operating rooms in town. Through the use of the touch screen, it's your task to follow the set procedures in order to treat patients' life threatening problems.

Don't worry, you won't need a copy of Gray's Anatomy to play Trauma Center. This game isn't trying to simulate a real operating room, instead abridging -- or in some cases, fantasizing -- situations and surgical techniques down to ten different touch screen motions. Early in the game the nurse will literally hold your hand and walk you through the different elements of the surgery table -- when and how to use the scalpel, drain, forceps, antibiotic gel, and other instruments at the touch screen control. The game awards points for how fast and how well you've performed a specific motion, which is calculated after the full procedure is completed and the patient's all stitched up.

The game is almost literally an advanced game of Operation. Each procedure is more difficult than the one that preceded it, requiring players to hack out diseased tumors or remove harmful foreign bodies without further injuring the patient. Since the game follows a strict path, players won't be able to, say, write their name in a patient's flesh using the laser or scalpel -- if a specific tool isn't needed for a job, using it generally won't harm the "victim." But since time and technique is critical to each challenge, using the wrong instrument at the wrong time is precious seconds off the clock, bringing the patient one beat closer to a flatline.

Trauma Center is definitely no pushover. The game requires a constant focus all across the two screens -- players need to be quick pulling off one technique without causing the need to fix another problem. Later in the game the lead character will come across a mystical "Healing Touch" technique that gives players the ability to slow time down to a crawl, something that will definitely come in handy when the sicker patients, with multiple conditions, wander their way through the door. Because the game requires so much focus and attention in its gameplay, the repetitive action may get a little tiring and tedious after a string of healed patients. But luckily players can save their progress after each victim for a necessary breather or two.

The game's structure unfolds a very "soap opera" storyline that's definitely an acquired taste. The dialogue between doctor and nurse is all handled through text and anime-posing talking heads, and it's honestly not all that important to follow aside from the plot device that gives players the Healing Touch early in the story. The plot would certainly have been a bit more interesting with a better presentation or voice acting, but since most of the character development and relationships have minimal effect on the actual gameplay that takes place after the cutscenes.

Once a patient's been saved from his internal threat, players can attempt the surgery again without the messiness of the storyline via the Challenge Mode. The game rates players based on their speed and technique, and chances are the ranking for successfully patching up a specific patient will rank somewhere on the low scale. That's where the Challenge Mode comes in, and it's actually a lot of fun trying to rise up in the ranks and points with each patient. So, even when the story mode ends, players still have work to do attempting to get the coveted S rank for each patient that rolled into the operating room.

The game does flub in a few places. Some operating procedures require zooming in on the exposed organs via a "circular" motion with the proper instrument. When up close and personal like this, the touch screen loses its sensitivity towards the top of the display, and players will have to spend precious seconds zooming back the display in order to recenter the zoom-in for a much better approach on the touch screen. And because the game ranks points based on pulling off specific motions with accuracy, it's difficult to tell why some actions result in a "Bad" "OK" "Good" or "Cool" rating, which, in turn, makes it difficult to know how to improve on that particular move.

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