Platform: Nintendo
DS Genre: Playing Doctor Publisher: Atlus Developer: Atlus ETA: October 2005
Trauma
Center: Under the Knife
For
a lot of people, an operating room scene in a medical drama can be
quite exciting, with all the screaming about being unable to stop the
bleeding, cracking chests, and making careful incisions.It looks like Atlus took a look at these shows, then looked at
the Nintendo DS, and said, “You know, we should try to make a game
that plays out like one of these dramas.”And that they are doing with Trauma Center: Under the Knife.
Players
will take on the role of a doctor working in a hospital emergency room,
where everything starts off simple enough doing routine procedures.However, a mysterious disease begins to sweep through the
hospital, and players have to figure out how cure it, and fast, because
it’s going to make a lot of patients quite dead if they don’t hurry.
While
the top screen of the DS will be dedicated to messages from nurses and
other colleagues during surgery, it’s the lower screen where all of
the real action takes place, as players use their stylus pen to select
from ten different instruments (tweezers, needles,
disinfectant
swabs, scalpels, etc) and perform their tasks.As one works through a procedure, they have to get things done as
quickly, and neatly (read safely) as possible, be it stitching someone
up, removing foreign objects, or more complicated surgery (all via the
stylus).Once players have finished their work, the game looks at how well
they performed and awards a letter grade accordingly.
Trauma
Center appears to be doing its best in providing something different in
videogames compared to a lot of the strategy, action, and
role-playing games currently on
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the
market.Now the question on
my mind is if Atlus decided to sneak in a secret Super Proctology Mode
for the game…one in a million doc, one in a million…