After the success of Trauma Center: Under the Knife on the Nintendo DS, Atlus has decided to bring their “surgeon simulator” to the Wii. Now that I’ve finally played Under the Knife, I can see how the game fares on the Wii in comparison.
Trauma Center: Second Opinion is basically the same game as the one on the DS. It’s not sequel, it’s just an improved version with the controls adapted to the Wii.
You will notice right away the updated character artwork, as they all look a bit less childish. Also new is a lot of the music, some of the tracks being remixes of those in the DS version. The plot remains the same, to try and stop the GUILT outbreak and find a cure for it. You still have to do a lot of reading to get acquainted with the story. There is some partial voice acting (and well done too), but not as much as I expected. Having the characters actually speak would have been a more than welcome addition and would greatly add to the drama of the events.
The stylus has been replaced by the Wii-mote, which represents all the tools you will need, and you can now easily access them with the nunchuk’s analog stick, via the pie-menu interface. The previous process of tapping a tool and going back to what you were doing was a way of wasting precious time, and the pie-menu makes tool selection a lot quicker and intuitive.
Second Opinion has added some new tools to the menu as well: a defibrillator to revive your patients (no need to do cardiac massage anymore), a penlight to illuminate dark areas and a flash camera that you can also use as a source of light.
The game also expands the DS version by adding a new playable character, Nozomi Weaver, who also possesses the Healing Touch. Completing an entire chapter with Dr. Stiles will unlock a new level to play as Dr. Weaver.
Also new are the difficulty settings, easy, medium and hard. Some new patient conditions have been added to the mix, such as fractures and heart transplants, which require you to learn brand new procedures.
For example, you can use the Wii-mote to grab a piece of bone from a fracture and turn your wrist to rotate it and place it in the correct position. The Wii-mote and nunchuk represent both paddles of a defibrillator. And I was pleasantly surprised at how cool it is to use the forceps, it feels very real as you press A and B simultaneously to pick something up, just as if you were holding the real thing between your fingers.
Although it may seem odd and difficult to do precise movements while sitting far away from the TV, you don’t need pixel-perfect movements to perform your surgeries. But that doesn’t mean it will be easy, especially for those with shaky hands like me. I finally found that having my elbow resting on my knee made for better control of the cursor.
Yes, if you must know, Trauma Center is a lot easier on the DS, where the stylus actually touches the screen, but that’s why there are difficulty settings this time around. Time for you to get a second opinion and try it out!