Trauma Team

[MrPopo]

Was curious if anyone else has gotten this yet, and what your thoughts were. Here's a quick rundown for the uninitiated:

Trauma Team is the next game in the Trauma Center series. The focus here, though, is on the entire operations of the hospital, instead of just the actions of a brilliant surgeon. There are six characters you play as who represent the six specialties. There's surgery, orthopedics (putting together bone), endoscopy (camera tube down the throat), first response, diagnostics (Dr. House mode) and forensics (think Phoenix Wright). There is no GUILT this time, nor any healing touch; the operations are a bit more realistic in that regard. The missions also fall on a timeline. If you've ever played Odin Sphere you'll remember that all five characters had their story events and missions plotted on five parallel timelines, and you could use that to get a rough chronological order as the stories intersect. Same thing happens here. The difference is that you can switch between characters at any point. Another change from previous games is there is no time limit. There's only vitals for surgery, endoscopy, and first response, and the other three have a misses limit.

So far my favorite mode has been Dr. House mode (diagnostics). You don't have a team to insult, but the doctor is still not the friendliest guy. You also have the luxury of your patient not suddenly going into life threatening conditions, so you can gather all the symptoms first before coming to the diagnosis, instead of the get a few, treat, make the patient convulse, get a few more, treat again, etc. pattern of House. You do still get the symptoms in batches; initial examination might suggest several possibilities that need a CT and MRI to narrow down, which unlocks more testing. You also have to deal with patients not being cooperative; just like a real doctor you need consent. I had a patient who I needed a CT from, but first I needed to get as many other symptoms as possible to give him a few "this is gonna fuck you up" prognoses.

Since I'm playing in chronological order I haven't gotten to surgery or first response yet. Orthopedics is a very slowed down surgery. You might remember from Trauma Center a few of the bone-setting missions. These are similar, only isntead of using gel to fuse the bone you have to drill in holes and use a plate to keep things together. You also might have to cut bones into shape, which has leds to the one problem I've seen with this mode; the intial control for shaping a large item is an auto-tracking camera. It'll throw you a few times, as you're not always sure when it's going to track both vertically and horizontally, or just across one dimension. Endoscopy is like Descent, but with tumors instead of killer mining robots. You control the Wiimote like you're feeding a tube into the patient and have to be careful that you don't hit the walls or sphincters. You also need to pay more attention to timing than in surgery. If you inject too much liquid or cauterize for too long you'll cause harm, and you don't get the success indication until you let off the button. Finally, forensics is like the Phoenix Wright games. You examine the bodies, examine the scene, and listen to testimony. This gives you clue cards which youc an combine to put the pieces together. However, when you combine two valid cards (if combination is invalid there's no effect) you have to answer a quiz as to why they're related. Success combines them, failure causes a miss. Once you get enough evidence you put together the entire sequence of events.

All in all, it's pretty damn fun. There's also a two-player mode for the various surgery-esque roles. For first response, since you will be working multiple patients you assign which patient goes for which player. With orthopedics you switch off every miss. Endoscopy is a switch off after a time limit, and surgery has you divvy up the tools between the two players.

[Kemiroch]

I'm really having a good time with this game. I also like Diagnostics, and Forensics is also one of my favorites. They remind me of old school adventure games. Is it odd that the actual operations are my least favorite segments?

One thing I am very pleased with so far is the length of the game. As I get more and more engrossed by the story I keep saying to myself "Thank goodness there's still a lot more to come!"

[yomomma1]

I hate endoscopy. Mainly because of how you move.
I liked orthopedics the most. Forensics is... meh. I get stuck alot.