Fun on top, but what's under is a bit more dull
| Platform | Presentation |
Controls |
Variety |
Audio |
Depth |
Value & Fun | OVERALL |
| Nintendo DS | 8.00 |
9.00 |
9.00 |
8.50 |
7.50 |
6.00 | 7.86 |
| Presentation |
8.00 |
|
Trauma Center looks the part when it comes to a surgery games. Everything is distinguishable and thankfully not disgustingly gory. Embedded glass looks particularly nice, as does the blood from a wound when it overflows and needs to be drained.
|
| Controls |
9.00 |
|
The controls take a surprisingly large amount of practice to adjust to. Precision is required, and it will feel touchy at first -- even unresponsive. Those feelings go away as you improve to match the increasingly difficult procedures. The limited use within a time period of different tools is a bit annoying and strange that it's there, but it does add to the depth -- although also to the frustration.
|
| Variety |
9.00 |
|
Variety is a tough nut to crack. There are a solid number of procedures and plenty of tools to perfect. This is also where I reward the sheer uniqueness of the gameplay as there is nothing like Trauma Center currently available. However, the game is too short -- at my finish time within the range of 7-8 hours, some real surgeries last longer.
|
| Audio |
8.50 |
|
The sound is actually pretty important during the surgery -- you hear when the vitals siginificantly lower, hear when the nurse calls to say something important, and you hear what makes contact with what. The music is solid, and one piece played during a scene with Secretary Anderson is among the best pieces of music I've heard in a game -- it's a shame there's no sound test. But the actual music is a bit limited in variety.
|
| Depth |
7.50 |
|
You'll uncover different techniques to going about a surgery, as well as having to learn how to solve different diseases while maintaining vitals. It gets very intense.
|
| Value & Fun |
6.00 |
|
Once you finish a procedure, there is no real desire to go back and do it again. Also, by the end of the game, the first half of the game is likely to seem rather simplistic. However, the main problem plaguing the game is what you end up curing for at least half the game -- different strains of a disease called GUILT. The problem is that the strains are basically insects in the body, and you have to do different things to eradicate them. It's different, it's interesting -- BUT IT'S NOT SURGERY. Earlier in the game, you remove tumours and surture wounds from glass and that is rewarding; but GUILT doesn't really feel like surgery at all, and I find that very disappointing. The main incentive to go back would be to get high scores, but simply successfully completely the surgery was all that really mattered during the play-through. There's also no running tab of score during the campaign to go through and try to beat, which would have been nice.
|
| Overall |
7.86 |
|
I got Trauma Center: Under the Knife because I wanted a new experience. I got that. However, it was cut short by length, and further by abstraction of procedures. It is the most intense experience I've had in a game since F-Zero GX, but it disappoints overall, despite to the solidity of the title. This is probably the most fitting of a rent-it-first title there is.
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Posted by Ellyoda Sat, 31 Dec 2005 00:00:00
