Trauma in the Center (Trauma Center: Under the Knife (DS))

Member Name: Julia95x

Product:	Trauma Center: Under the Knife (DS)
Date:	28/07/08 (100 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: See Review

Disadvantages: See Review

My brother wants to be a surgeon so I thought Trauma Center: Under the Knife would be a great game for him! So I bought it for him and of course had to give it a go myself!

~Storyline~
In this game you play a young unexperienced doctor called Dr. Derek Stiles who works at Hope Hospital. Derek takes his job very casually until he almost loses one of his patients because of his carefree attitude. Because of this Derek wonders if he should quit being a surgeon but suddenly an emergency patient comes in. Of course, it's up to Derek to save him. Things don't start of very well but slowly, Derek is able to fix up the patient.
I won't give anymore of the storyline away now!

~Playing~
When performing surgery, you will use the touch screen and stylus.
If you manage to complete the surgery successfully, you will see the message 'Operation successful'.When you successfully complete the surgery you get a rank, A, B or C. Rank A is "Senior Surgeon", B "Specialist", and Rank C "Rookie Doctor". If you fail the Operation you get the message 'Operation failed'. If you fail the operation, you will get the chance to either Retry the operation or to Quit.
On the left and right sides of the screen, there are small icons which are the tools that you will need to use, your clamp, laser, scalpel, and even antibiotic gel which will disinfect anything which you put on. The rest of the screen is the part of the patient you are performing surgery on. If the patient is uncut (which is most of the time) then you will need to cut open the patient with the scalpel very carefully using a steady hand.
Depending on the patient, you could be removing a normal tumor or a GUILT-infected tumor which will be moving around making it really hard to remove. It sounds easy but because you have a different time limit for each surgery you perform it's hard to complete each one.As well as this the Patient obviously needs to be kept in a stable condition.
The actual actions you do with the stylus are very simple, for example dotty movements around a tumor or zig-zag movements over a cut. The surgeries will obviously get harder and harder and some of the harder ones are really hard to complete, you may need to work out the trick on some of them.
On the top screen of the DS, there is your nurse who will help you when performing the surgeries.

~Audio~
The music played in the game is quite repetitive but the audio that is on the game is good and fits in with the game very well. There are some sound effects when you are performing the surgery such as when you are cutting the patient. Again the sound effects fit in well and doesn't make the game seem silly. With speech there are only some random phrases, for example "Doctor!". The music changes during the surgery to add tension and the audio then is a bit dramatic!

~Graphics~
The characters in this game are very anime based so they have all the anime features. Although you might think it, the pictures when cutting a patient up never gets to gory and blood doesn't go pouring everywhere! The graphics aren't perfect but I don't think that it matters and the graphics that there are are great with the game.

~Extra~
There is a challenge mode on the game where you can re-do any surgeries that you completed in the main game, this is so you can try and beat your previous scores.

~Conclusion~
This game is 100% worth the money you pay. With a great storyline and good audio and graphics, I can't think of a disadvantage to stop you buying this game!

Summary: Worth it, even at full price.