Game Review: Trauma Center: Second Opinion For Nintendo Wii

Trauma Center: Second Opinion for the Nintendo Wii, luckily for me was only rented.
I read the other reviews on here first, which promised me some fun game play, and this is why I picked it up.
I will agree the game was fun for, oh a mere 20 minutes. After that everything else was just a repeat of the last surgery, or mission. However you would put it.

You start off as an extremely immature, lazy sleepy eyed, doctor; Doctor Styles.
No one really likes him/you; everyone tells him he’s not a real doctor. Even as you play with him, you yourself will begin to feel like he’s a moron. What kind of doctor would perform surgery without blood test results first? Really it’s not your fault though. You have no control over the story line, and the immature behavior of your doctor. You only control him in the surgery room, after that he’s whatever the game developer wants him to be. Idiot, smart, idiot…

Every surgery is like the last with some minor changes. First you go through about 5 minutes worth of extremely boring semi pointless dialogue, before each surgery. No voices either. I’m talking reading, reading, and more reading. The character faces never change. They sit at the right side of the screen and the only thing that changes is the dialogue box.

The music never changes either. There are two, yes, only two different melodies; a good upbeat rhythm, or, a sad melancholy tune. When you hear the sad music, you know something sad is going to happen in the dialogue, or- story. If it’s good music, it’s good news. Extremely predictable. Get it? Got it? Good.

Performing surgery can be quite difficult at first. You have your operation tools on the bottom left side of the screen. This is the hardest part to figure out on the controller. For some reason all of the tools are lined up in a circle, instead of just a straight line on the bottom of the screen. You have to use the nun-chucks analog to choose which tool you will be using. However this is tricky, the analog is hard to control and choosing the right tool you want is hard. Like, very hard!

The remote you hold in your other hand becomes the doctor’s hand. At first it’s a tad bit tricky to do all of the things perfect. You will find yourself sewing up stitches, and sometimes messing up really bad. You have to move your hand in a zig zag motion to sew up a patient.

You really only get 3 patients to work on in the beginning as your tutorial, after that your nurse (assistant) leaves the hospital- more boring blah blah this and that dialogue. After she leaves you get a new nurse who doesn’t help you anymore. She will sit there at the bottom of the screen though, and scream ‘DOCTOR’ every time you mess something up. Other than that she’s useless to you. You will be hearing a lot of that in the entire game. DOCTOR, DOCTOR, DOCTOR… It’s very annoying, and probably the only real voice you will hear in the game.

Some of the surgeries you will be performing are, removal of tumors, removal of glass in the body. You will be putting bones back together, which is probably the hardest thing for you to do. It consists of making hands jerks, and weird twists and turns of the wrist, to get bones back to their correct positions. Every surgery will feel like the last, (besides bones surgeries) only longer and more tedious, as you have a time limit ranging from 3 minutes to 5 minutes. If you do not complete the surgery/operation within the allowed time, the patient will flat line and die. Yes, I lost one because of a fractured arm. Whoopsie daisy! My bad!

Pretty soon your immature doctor becomes an adult, and realizes his past mistakes, but wait there is a twist. Now that he takes his job seriously, he’s also magical! Hooray! Yawn. Figures…
That’s right, your character Dr. Styles has a rare healing touch. Mm hmm, this is the stupidest thing in the story they could of thrown in. You now can draw a star on the patient and it could save them from death. Pretty much it means none of your patients will die, if you draw a star on them time slows down, and you can save him. Lame.
You also have a magical potion, a shot. You give your patient a shot of this green medicine, and their heart rate goes up. The green magic goop never runs out either. So poke away.

You will be working with a few different tools. A scalpel, magic green medicine, disinfectant, ultrasonic/magnifying glass, tweezers, and during some missions other tools will become available. But only for that mission, you don’t get to keep them.

Now lets move on and cover the graphics. I myself have a weak stomach, and can’t bear to look at blood or inside of organs, and guts.
Thankfully this game did a nice job of making it not too graphical, or gut wrenching disgusting. To me they are not wonderful graphics, but well enough for such a game. I honestly wouldn’t want to see better graphics though.
However the way the blood pours in the game is too fake for me. It comes out in clouds, and kind of fuzzes over the effected area. It’s weird looking. A little gushing would have been okay to add, without crossing the line into disgust.

Every mission ends the same 99% of the time. You sew them up, disinfect them, and then give them a bandage. All done.
Each mission is repetitive, so you won’t find yourself playing this game longer than an hour or 2 when you first buy it. After that, it’s just another disc to throw into the closet. There is more dialogue in this game then there is actual game play. The dialogue is boring, and gets worse as the game continues.

I wouldn’t recommend buying this game, but I would recommend giving it a try by renting it. It’s not worth the $50 price tag most stores are asking for it. You could probably beat the game in a day or two, if you didn’t die of boredom first. For a game to last only 2 days, it’s not even worth a buy.