Trauma Center: New Blood Review (WII)

Inject some medical fun into your Wii, STAT!

The patient is suffering from shotgun wounds to the torso and lungs. Several internal organs have succumb to severe haemorrhaging. Anti-biotic gel is low and vitals have dropped to near fatal levels. The operating theatre is littered with plates, books and several Rock Band accessories. All surgical equipment has been replaced by a Wii Remote and Nunchuck and are in the hands of a shaky teen whose attention keeps drawing away from the life-or-death operation to the damp patch on the ceiling. Welcome to Trauma Center: New Blood.

A so called medical simulator doesn’t sound like the most enthralling concept for any Wii game. After all, you’ve got an old version of Operation lodged somewhere in the back of your cupboard, what more do you need? Yet over the years, Trauma Center has proved that there’s a lot more to removing the innards of humans than we may think…albeit an odd method of doing so. New Blood contains all the life threatening surgeries and futuristic metamorphic viruses that we’ve come to expect from the series so far, yet comes with a few tweaks.

This time around, doctors ‘Markus Vaughn’ and ‘Valerie Blaylock’ step up to take on a new strain of merciless viruses and extract various household objects from limp muscles. The plot isn’t much and is pretty similar to that of Second Opinion. This does not automatically make it a skippable part of the game, however, as some of the predicaments the doctors find themselves in are so bizarre and unpredictable, they somehow make the storyline incredibly original and keeps you so intrigued that you genuinely want to find out what happens next. Unfortunately I can’t spoil some of the unusual circumstances you’ll find yourself in, but when the game starts with a patient who ‘Ignored a tour guide’s advice and picked a fight with a grizzly bear’, you know it’s going to spiral down into a huge pit of crazies.

The amount of variety in the operations means that a dull moment rarely occurs

The ability to pick one of the two playable doctors remains ultimately pointless when it comes to single player mode and only really comes into play when you call a buddy over. All operations from each doctor are ranked individually, so the most competitive partnerships can assign a character to each player and both can compete for medical supremacy. However, players will have to throw aside their competitive natures if they are to take advantage of the best multi-player experience in New Blood, the co-operative operations. Going into operations together adds a new, tenser atmosphere to the game and communication is about as important as skill. Although a fantastic addition, I do believe that co-op mode was only placed into the game to ruin friendships/relationships/marriages as one tiny mistake with have both of you hurling abuse at each other rather than the TV.

Apart from that, not a lot has changed from Second Opinion. All the tools from the original are here, as well as ‘The Healing Touch’, an ability which allows you to slow down time…by drawing a pentagram on your patient. The story is once again told in a basic graphic novel style with the new addition of voice acting, the quality of which changes the overall feel of the game drastically throughout. At some points it sounds like a mildly harrowing medical drama. At other points characters sound so bizarrely out of place when alone together it’s as if they’re stuck in a terrible porn film.

Although a lot of operations rely on similar techniques needed in the previous game, New Blood covers it well by pitting you against new strains of viruses and throws you in brand new scenarios, leading you to extracting bullets from patients bodies and applying skin grafts to burns. The amount of variety in the operations means that a dull moment rarely occurs. The difficulty curve also rises slowly managing to challenge players and compliment gameplay well…up until four hours in…

In later chapters, the difficulty of missions suddenly sky rockets upwards and if you make a mistake, the game doesn’t so much punish you with a smack in the face as it does tickle your nose with one hand whilst it slowly aligns an anvil over your head with the other in eager anticipation. The slightest of innocent slip-ups in later missions can turn your patient into a corpse in the blink of an eye, and not even the ability to control time can help you in those cases.

New Blood also doesn’t do so well when it comes to enticing newcomers to the series. I have been fortunate enough to play earlier instalments and so was able to traverse a lot of early missions with ease due to prior knowledge. However, in the eyes of someone who’s never played any games in the series before, newcomers are simply thrown in and it doesn’t feel like Atlus has put in a lot of effort to teach players the basic skills of the game. Passing the Wii Remote to a fellow friend of mine who is a said newcomer had him enter a frenzied fit before having a panic attack on my floor in the middle of one incredibly tense operation. Ironically thanks to Trauma Center I was able to cope with the situation well, but needless to say, he absolutely hated it.

As established, this is not a good introduction to the series, yet veterans should feel right at home with Trauma Center: New Blood. Many have complained of it’s ridiculous difficulty levels later on, yet it never feels like it’s throwing you an impossible challenge, leading to more satisfying victories for those who persevere and prevail. Trauma Center: New Blood may not be a truly ambitious sequel, yet still provides an enjoyable experience for those who lapped up Second Opinion.

Ironically, several days after submitting this review for editing, I actually had to visit a hospital for a nasty injury, and can safely say that the atmosphere was genuinely similar to most of New Blood’s scenarios. So…New Blood also gets a thumbs up in the atmosphere department and actually manages to root the game into some realistic ground, despite some of the bizarre plot twists.