Trauma Team

[Kaladron]

I can't believe there isn't a thread for this already. It's an absolutely brilliant game and one of the finest Wii titles not to be made by Nintendo.

If you've played the other Trauma Center games then you'll find this a huge step forward. There are six playable doctors, all of which have their own style of gameplay and can be selected at will, either following each story individually or weaving between them like a soap opera.

Around half follow the standard Trauma Center style of gameplay with puzzle-like high-pressure operations. The game design has been massively improved here, getting rid of the silly Healing Touch (which was too tricky to pull off on Wii) and introducing the first-person Endoscopy mode which takes much better advantage of 3D space.

The other modes are more like a traditional adventure game in the way they function. You can be a GP, who'll have to perform tests and examinations to diagnose a patient's problems. And you can be a forensics expert (Naomi from Second Opinion) who performs autopsies and crime scene investigations to unravel the mysteries of various deaths - think a streamlined version of Phoenix Wright with less chatter and more deduction.

There's much more variety to the gameplay styles now, which lends the game a more even tone. The old Trauma Centers tended crank up the tension and difficulty to almost unbearable levels and were almost exclusively about challenge and dexterity. Team on the other hand strikes a greater balance between challenging arcade-puzzle sequences and slower-paced thoughtful puzzles.

The whole thing is wrapped up in a rather nice story that unfolds the more you delve into each character's backgrounds and see how each of their stories interconnect even when they're not on-screen together - once a patient is diagnosed, for example, it's not uncommon to see them pop up again in a surgery scene.

As with the other Trauma games, Atlus has injected a quirky sense of humour. The dialogue (almost all of which is voiced) is sharp, snappy and occasionally witty. Each character is exactly that... A person with a distinct personality and set of characteristics that distinguish them from the others. I'm sure you'll find one or two that you prefer over the others, especially as some of them have rather unusual "extra-curricular" activities.

I'm only about 5 hours in right now, so I can't give a definitive verdict. But from what I've experience so far, this is shaping up to be just the second wind that Trauma Center needed and is easily one of my favourite games of the year.

Anyone else playing this?

[KIT786]

didn't think this was out anywhere yet! what region is it from?

[Kaladron]

US. Came out a few weeks ago.

Nintendo hasn't announced a UK release yet but as they waited a year to localise New Blood and haven't even bothered with Under The Knife 2 yet, I wouldn't hold your breath.

[wakka]

As it happened this game never made it to the UK. Played about 10 hours of this over the weekend with the gf, it's a genuinely superb game and one of the Wii's hidden gems in my opinion.

As Kaladron says above, it expands massively on the format of previous Trauma games. I last played Second Opinion at the Wii's US launch, a remake of the first game for DS. It wasn't that great. It was repetitive (seriously how many polyps do these patients have?), way too difficult and the conversation/story elements felt tacked on and didn't add much.

This game on the other hand brilliantly blends the action type levels that are traditionally Trauma's bread-and-butter with visual novel levels that challenge you to deduce conclusions from evidence. The split is almost exactly 50/50, certainly in terms of play time - Naomi's forensics levels regularly last well over one hour, maybe even two.

The story is the silly, melodramatic nonsense that you'd expect from a series that resides somewhere between a J-Drama and a manga in terms of tone, but it hooks you in - I've found this game the most compulsively addictive thing I've played in months. It probably helps that I do enjoy this kind of story in games though, especially in visual novels!

Special mention must go to the game's interface and structure. There is only one menu, where you flick between the six different character's timelines. Each timeline goes down the screen, divided by day. Not every character will have a stage to play on every day, but every day will have at least one stage taking place on it. If Naomi and Hank both have stages taking place on the same day on the timeline, this means that they are happening concurrently within the game's story.

It's an interesting way of organising a game's story, and allows for multiple play styles - I'm playing through strictly chronologically, so I finish all of the stages on a certain day before I continue. However, you could choose to play through each character's timeline one by one, in order to see the story from one perspective at a time. It helps that the interface itself is slick and stripped back to only the necessities. It also looks really good (playing in progressive scan on a Panasonic plasma).

The action levels are not the repetitive torture fests that they quickly became in Second Opinion (note I haven't played New Blood so can't comment on that). They're easier and more fun, but retain the rhythm action style scoring - suturing a wound haphazardly will earn you a 'Bad', doing it barely adequately will earn an 'OK', then there's 'Good', 'Good+' and finally 'Cool' for doing it perfectly. Your ratings during the level earn you points, and it's all totted up for a rank at the end. You can replay levels for score - with the option of skipping all story elements of course.

Another mention goes to the game's co-op functions. All action levels (basically various types of surgery and endoscopy) include a co-op mode, which works in different ways depending on what you're doing. On its most basic level you switch back and forth on a timer, with about 1 minute gameplay each before it switches back over. On more sophisticated levels you actively cooperate, with access to different sets of tools to help each other perform a surgery. It works well, and it's really fun. Everything I've played so far has been with the gf, and as such I can highly recommend it as a 2 player game.

Visual novel type levels are one player only, but as these are more cerebral than dexterity tests, it still works well as a game for two to sit and play and come up with ideas or strategies together. Atlus clearly used lots of medical consultation in the development, too - my gf is a final year medical student, and she's able to whip through the diagnostic levels thanks to the fact that the clues and evidence you're using really are extremely true to life. Pretty impressive really.

A genuinely superb game that takes the Trauma format to new and great places. I really really hope they make a Trauma Team 2 for Wii U, it would be an absolute system seller for me. The wiimote's pointer works great, but I think the gamepad screen could be even better - with player 2 helping out with a wiimote maybe!

It's also one of the best visual novels I've ever played. Its story is not on a par with Policenauts, but its gameplay for me exceeds that of the Phoenix Wright titles. I also prefer it to Zero Escape, however this is probably as much personal preference as anything else.

TLDR: Massively underrated. Do play it.