Atlus’ latest Wii offering is another medical simulator that puts the lives of patients in the player’s hand If you’re not familiar with the series, now is the time to get acquainted. The unique mechanics provide a fantastic alternative to conventional gaming violence, making Trauma Team the perfect cure for action brawler burnout.
The titular trauma team is composed of six specialists who each practice a different branch of medicine. Surgery is lifted intact from previous Trauma games, with the Wiimote still standing in for the scalpel, syringe, sutures, and scissors, as an all-in-one miracle medical tool. New operational additions include endoscopy, first response, and orthopedics, while diagnostics and forensics offer more cerebral investigative option The multifaceted team atmosphere makes for an incredibly immersive experience. You’ll be amazed at how easily a fifteen-minute procedure becomes a four-hour doctoral extravaganza.
Every time you’re stuck, diagnostics degenerates into a blind guessing game that puts more strain on your patience than it does on your intelligence. Low graphical resolution can make it difficult to identify abnormalities, while gratuitous game over screens further punish the player for artificial incompetence. You won’t be able to move forward until you find one infuriatingly imperceptible symptom that is always forehead-slappingly obvious after ten minutes of aggravated searching. Fortunately, game faqs are everywhere, so industrious gamers won’t remain stuck for very long. Even so, the design execution could have been much better. Simply adding a zoom feature would have eliminated the problems with imprecise imaging, and the issues are doubly inexplicable given that the same elements are better implemented elsewhere on the disc.
The forensics crime scenes are more open-ended than patient examinations, making the CSI-style investigations far less frustrating than diagnostic The mysterious cases are imperfect, but they do add significant narrative intrigue to the game. Forensics shows that Atlus’ ideas have potential, so I won’t criticize the developers for trying something new. Still, it will be interesting to see if future Trauma games are able to work out the existing mechanical kink
Despite being a gimmicky Wii game, Trauma Team is not for the entire family. There’s some mild teenage profanity and surgery, murder, and bloodshed, are heavily represented in the subject matter. You may be saving lives instead of taking them, but parents may not want young children playing a game in which victims are routinely impaled with I-beams and shards of glas
Trauma Team is as easy to pick up and play as any Wii title, and the adjustable difficulty settings make it fun for gamers of all experience level It’s also as enjoyable in short bursts as it is during extended gaming marathons, so the deep story and reasonable price tag make it a great value purchase with many hours of solid content. I’ll still be playing Trauma Team after finishing this Review, and that’s more than enough to give the game a wholehearted recommendation.
