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Trauma Center: Under the Knife Review
Written by Señor Cha Cha on Wednesday, October 5, 2005
Cutting people's chests open without those stupid HMOs getting in the way.
Some minor touch screen difficulties.
Paging Dr. Cha Cha. Dr. Cha Cha, your assistance is needed in the ER.
Damn right I'm needed! Out of my way hot and delectable nurses! Your heaving chests are distracting me from the task at hand! This man's life depends on my extensive medical knowledge. What? Stop feeling me up! This is a Trauma Center damnit! This guy's about to go Under the Knife! Under the...Under the...oh my god! I was supposed to meet Johnson on the golf course at 3PM! Screw this guy! I'm outta here!
That's me doing my exquisite MD impression and it's marvelous, but all BS aside, Atlus' Trauma Center: Under the Knife for the Nintendo DS is serious business. It's a finely detailed surgery game and it's superbly fantastic. Not only does it make excellent use of the system's slick touch screen abilities, but it's got an intriguing story that's full of more twists and turns than an entire year of General Hospital.
The DS was just made for a surgery game and Atlus has delivered a great one. Featuring multiple different types of operations, I just danced throughout this title like a kid who recently nabbed one of Willy Wonka's golden tickets (or grew up with toys that came with cans of slime). I cut out tumors, drained blood, applied copious amounts of antibiotic gel (clearly the answer to everything), sliced open people's hearts, pulled glass from arms, stitched up skin and vital organs, and did other great stuff. In fact, while Trauma Center does have a bit of a cartoon appearance it's about as gross as Burger King's Meatnormous sandwich, unnerving enough that a few of my friends refused to sit through some of the more intense operations. But that's why surgery isn't for everyone.
Under the Knife is just as enjoyable as the best games on the market but it's a different kind of fun. Pumped full of extremely intense moments, satisfaction comes from weathering the proverbial storm and saving lives. It never stops being cool but it does become extremely difficult. Most times I was frantically cutting, draining, and sewing before the time ran out and doing this produced this huge wave of adrenaline that I happily surfed for several moments at a time. It's a delightfully stressful experience.
To meet the game's various goals, the developers have provided several important instruments to work with. There's a scalpel, that good old antibiotic gel, tape, tweezers, a laser, a device used to drain blood, and some other cool stuff. Whenever you need something all you have to do is select it by tapping its respective icon on the touch screen, and Atlus has done a nice job making the various switching a seamless process. I suppose it would have been cool if I could speak into the microphone and ask the nurse to hand me these tools, but considering the time constraints put on each operation it's best that I work quickly.
Speaking of nurses, the ones in Trauma Center are quite attractive if you're fond of anime girls, and they're actually just a small part of this game's narrative. You see, even though the primary focus has been placed on the operations because that's where all of the action is, there's plenty going on in between patients. This game has quite an interesting story that becomes more and more bizarre as you play, and what's particularly awesome is it's so easy to become engrossed in it that it actually becomes just as integral to the game as the surgery is. Sometimes, operating on a patient becomes secondary to seeing how the plot turns out, and the only time that I skipped through the cut scenes was after I viewed them.
The characters are also pretty well developed. Dr. Stiles, who you play as, is a young, hot shot kid comprised of several different layers, and the various people he runs into (this includes his fabulous and spunky assistants) help shape the man that he'll eventually become. He doesn't just cut people for a living and call it a day. This dude cares for his patients, thinks about his family, and sometimes doubts his own abilities. He's a likeable guy, and throughout the course of his adventure I wanted nothing but his success.
I only have a couple of criticisms, the first of which is the touch screen gameplay. Every so often it won't work correctly. It doesn't happen often, but when it does it really sucks, especially when the clock is a factor. I don't think it mars the overall experience, but when the chips are down and I go to cut something out and the stylus yields no response, I'm not a happy doctor.
My last complaint is with the shenanigans that wind up occurring. At the start I was draining tumors and doing real world stuff, but about an hour into the game Trauma Center takes a strange sci-fi turn that makes it a bit cheesy. I found myself desiring information from this game, to learn things about the human body and to approach situations from a more technical perspective. For the sake of entertainment the path that the developers took works for the masses, but in the future, I'd like to see something more by the book.
Switching gears, I'm really enamored with Trauma Center's graphics. The mixture of beautifully drawn 2D characters displayed on the top screen and the 3D engine on the bottom provides a really nice contrast. The same goes for the music. The dramatic beats that play at the title screen and during operations really gets the blood pumping, so to speak, and the nonchalant tracks that play during most of the cut scenes are the equivalent of receiving a lollipop after a tetanus shot. Just sweet, soothing stuff.
Trauma Center: Under the Knife is almost everything that I expected it to be; a well polished and kick ass surgery game that makes excellent use of the Nintendo DS' touch screen. But what I wasn't prepared for was its engaging story, and that added bonus puts this game over the top. The best product that Atlus has published in years, Under the Knife is another must buy DS title and a reason to own the system.
posted October 5, 2005