Trauma Center: Under The Knife Review

The biggest challenge when it comes to developing for the DS is taking full advantage of its features. We have the dual screens, the touch screen, microphone and built-in wireless adapter. Most owners of the handheld desire games to take advantage of the touch screen as much as possible. This is because the DS’ driving feature is in fact its touch screen. The very slogan of the Nintendo DS is “Touching Is Good”, therefore people who play DS games wish to experience that. Unfortunately not every DS game has done so, but there are a good number that have. Games like Nintendogs, Metroid Prime Hunters, Meteos and others have great touch screen features.

Trauma Center: Under The Knife is another perfect example for truly innovative touch screen control. Virtually the entire game relies upon it, and it happens to be the biggest strength of the experience. Incase the title doesn’t give it away, TC is a medically-themed game. You take on the role of young Derek Stiles. Stiles is a doctor that just finished his internship and is working to become a full-fledged O.R. surgeon. O.R. stands for operating room by the way.

As the case is with most games, the very beginning serves as your hands-on training. Doctor Stiles begins his career at Hope Hospital with a very rigid staff. Mary Fulton at age 39 happens to be the nurse that assists you with verbal tips during your rookie operations. Greg Kasal happens to be the senior surgeon of the hospital, and he’s called in upon all your failures. He also happens to be very critical of you because he pushes perfection. Then you have Mr. Robert Hoffman. He’s the director of the entire building as he makes sure everything is going smoothly. He does hold some dark secrets though, and they eventually surface due to circumstance.

Your training operations more or less help you become familiar with how TC utilizes the touch screen during surgery. You have ten different tools at your disposal: a laser, antibiotic gel, drainage, forceps, rubbing hand, ultrasound, a scalpel, stitches, a syringe and bandaging. Each tools serves a specific purpose, so knowing how to use each one is vital to complete the game. Your first operation has you help someone seriously injured in an accident, with glass shards that need to be extracted from their body. You also have a couple people with tumors showing up in various locations.

The process for surgeries is fairly straightforward, but they involve quite a bit. If you understand what goes on during real surgeries, you’ll have a pretty good idea about this game. From the very first cut to closing a patient up after success, there’s bound to be a lot of activity. The touch screen works beautifully with all of your ten tools, so a good majority of the game will feel like you’re really doing something. Parents don’t even have to worry about their kids seeing part of a body they wouldn’t want them to see at that age. You never see anything outside of a patient’s arms, upper chest and stomach area. With females, their chest area isn’t particularly ‘detailed’, so graphically it’s not explicit. It’s almost educational in a regard, as you see in a virtual environment what a heart, stomach, intestines and pancreas look like. Surprisingly the game won’t make you queasy either. While there does tend to be a lot of blood, it doesn’t really appear real. In fact, nothing really seems ‘real’, so worry of fainting or not being able to take something like that is nonexistent.

Operations themselves actually look pretty cool. How Atlus designed the bodies and the tools you use really make it feel like surgery. With the scalpel, you can see the cut being made into the skin. The laser fires a neat looking beam at whatever you’re trying to kill off. Every tool you use has a unique appearance on the touch screen, so nothing ever seems fake. Unfortunately the rest of the presentation isn’t so impressive.

The story is already a little overdrawn to begin with, but how everything pans out just isn’t entirely interesting. The cutscenes actually have a nice look and feel to them, but it doesn’t do much to wow you. The anime style of art is nice looking and all, but the characterization isn’t really pushed through it. There isn’t a huge amount of expression, and some people really seem to act the same. The briefings before surgeries happen to be nice. They also help you feel like a doctor in the right that you’re receiving the confidential information regarding a patient’s condition. It tells you their personal information as well as what is known about their ailments. But even so, while there are differing personalities in the characters, the presentation in its entirety is just a little bland.