A remake of the Nintendo DS game of the same name, Trauma Center casts you as an up and coming doctor charged with saving the lives of those who enter his hospital. Mainly by cutting them open and poking around in their guts till you make them better. Which may sound daunting, but thanks to the handy Wii Remote and Nunchuk, it's actually not all that bad. Your character, Doctor Derek Stiles, certainly thinks he's god's gift to surgery, though he does become less of a smug git as the game progresses.
The graphics are pretty clear so it's easy to see what you're doing, and if you get stuck, you have a nurse on hand to give you a gentle nudge. Before soon, surgery becomes second nature. It certainly makes a change from zapping aliens and other nasty creatures. Unfortunately, just when you're enjoying the ins and outs of surgery, things go a bit pear shaped.
The problem is that about a third of the way into the game Trauma Center turns into a load of sci-fi nonsense. No longer are you doing fun things like fixing bones, removing glass shards and removing tumours. Instead you're chasing organisms around your patients bodies. Yes, really. You suddenly find yourself dealing with little organisms that fly around inside patients, doing damage, forcing you to chase them around with your instruments.
And it's at this point that Trauma Center stops being an enjoyable surgery simulator and turns into an exercise in frustration. I can see how the designers were trying to keep things interesting, but just throwing this nonsense into the mix is ridiculous. It's like tuning in to watch Casualty only to see Charlie and co fighting off killer robots. Plus, actually trying to chase a fast moving object around someone's body with the remote is a pain in the backside to say the least. Trauma Center would have been a great game if only they'd stuck with the standard surgery instead of introducing all this sci-fi stuff. It's just a shame that they chose to mess the game up in this way.











