Trauma Center: Under The Knife 2

Trauma Center: Under The Knife 2 (Nintendo DS)

Rated “T” for “Teen”

Please consult your local game advisor before ingesting this game.

Time to cure those that are ill in Atlus’ new “Trauma Center: Under The Knife 2.”

Welcome back the original duo of Derek Stiles and Angie Thompson as you return to the DS to deal with the diseases of the world.

For the new players that just put on their scrubs for the first time, the Trauma Center series is a game of conducting surgery and fending off out of this world viri. You’ll suture wounds, keep patients’ health from failing, fix broken bones, cut moving viri and aiming your laser to eradicate them before they multiply or replicate or end up cutting your patient up even more showing their superiority for being a smaller celled organism that can simply wipeout any multi-celled human being, bandage up patients, you know – stuff that any normal doctor and nurse do.

Now for the seasoned residents picking up their scalpel again, you know what’s coming. Some normal procedures and then a few procedures filled with mind-boggling viri that cause havoc. As you progress through the game, you’ll come up against more challenging operations one after the other and truly put your hand-eye coordination to the test. It’s not for everyone, but for us masochistic succeeders, it sure is fun/frustrating to do.

So what is there to deal with this time? GUILT was obliterated in past installments. Well, like any other diseases, lingering effects may happen. Derek has to deal with PGS, Post GUILT Syndrome. PGS brings about patients from the past who have their wounded heals wounding them. This also brings characters from the past to help deal with the newly developed strands of PGS. PGS will act like normal GUILT, but with a few new alterations to each one.

What does this mean for you? More of the same thing you’ve done before and tons of text screens to read through. While the fun of surgery and diseases may excite you, the drama of Trauma Center is heavily carried through the dialogue that’s in between the surgeries. Now, you can skip all of this and just get to the fun scalpel action, but then you will be missing a huge chunk of Trauma Center. The storyline is better refined to reflect a few realistic issues that may come to any doctor (having to transfer, not being as good as you used to be, doubting your abilities). Dr. Stiles not only deals with his patients’ problems, but many of his own that the medical field has brought him.

The gameplay is the same. You’ll have your tools on the sides of the touch screen. Select what is needed and apply. Some tools (as well as operations) have been brought over from the Wii versions and have been changed to suit the DS. Much hasn’t changed here, although the response of using the tools has improved and that helps in dealing with major surgery.

The world of Trauma Center hasn’t changed much. It’s everything that it used to be and probably always will be. That doesn’t mean that this patient will flatline as it does not stutter in any aspect about it. While it keeps everything that was great about the series, it doesn't add anything to it. That doesn't hurt it too much since the gameplay and storyline are top of the line and what keep a game series like this going.

Dr. Stiles, successful surgery with a successful rating.

Rated 4 out of 5