Time to be a doctor

Title: Trauma Center: Under the Knife 2

Number of Players: 1

>

Developer: Atlus

ESRB Rating: Teen

- Blood,

- Mild language

- Mild suggestive themes

- Mild violence

Genre: Simulation, Puzzle

Rating: 5 out of 5

What it's about: Just to warn everyone, this is a direct sequel to the first Trauma Center: Under the knife for the DS back in 2005. I highly recommend playing that game first but it is -not- mandatory. When people are introduce they give you brief little tid-bits. Still, try to find the first game, and if you have a Wii you can get Trauma Center: Second Opinion (the Wii version is almost EXACTLY like the DS version only simply on the Wii and a handful more operations to do.) OKAY! Back to the review!

As I said earlier, this is a direct sequel to Trauma Center: Under the Knife that was released in 2005, you are world famous Dr. Derek Stiles, in the preveious game you and your nurse Angie Thomson stopped a rather odd virus known as GUILT that lead eventually led to organ failure and death. That was three years ago. Now you travel around the world, helping stop new strains of diseases. The game starts out in a war torn Africa and their you help villagers there and save a couple of people that were harmed in a battle. After defeating this chapter your off back to America with an apprentice to Caduceus (which is a group of doctors and nurses who all share your desire to eradicate harmful diseases). While your back at the North American branch of Caduceus you will learn that GUILT Victims are coming in with odd symptoms. While they are not GUILT positive they are suffering from PGS (pre-guilt syndrome) where there are some organ failures and mild side effects. After operating on some patients you will find out GUILT, as it was led to believe, was in fact not completely erased and there are new strands to fight off.

Gameplay: You will be doing surgeries in this game! As a doctor you need to mend bones, remove glass, sew up wounds, kill off tumors and more! Now, this game really isn't for everyone. For example if you get sick at even the slightest if simulated blood then not for you! (Even though the blood looks like splash of paint...) As you go through the game Angie offers helpful tips to let you know 'okay, you do this and this and this' at first. From the first game, the instructions are easier to comprehend, the tools last longer, and the icons are more clear and right on. You use the stylus as your scalpel, lazer, ultrasound, ETC. In general all you use IS the stylus with select to skip if your redoing a level/start for pause. Whats nice is if say you mess up and you go over your time limit/ kill the patient you can redo on easy. On the original game all you could do was set your mode in the beginning, and at times a level could be a downright evil evil thing. ^^;

The gamplay in general is very addicting to try to get your personal best. If your not operating on some poor soul your doing a puzzle to get a vaccine out, or a chapter is devoted purely to story line. There is a LOT of reading in this game, so if you don't feel like reading through again, this game is not for you. A lot of time would be devoted in this game JUST to read, now its not just all dribble its plot moving stuff, so unless you do not care and just want to play through the surgeries feel free to hit select and skip all the 'nonsense'.

My Opinion: GET IT! Especially if your a fan of say House, ER, or General Hospital. This game is great for anyone who likes those shows/ loves puzzles and figuring things out. Its an addicting game its really really fun. For me personally its a game worth the 30 dollars. Not only is it fun, its a good length in gameplay. While I'm not exactly sure how long it is I am on chapter 3 and played it for 3 hours and theres STILL a lot of stuff to do. From what I remember of the first game (which I was ready to smash my DS a couple of times over the last missions) the gameplay was roughly 50+ hours. This one from what I've heard is longer. So once again if you like these type of games it is a total and complete must have.

Happy Gaming

~Rozen

On a side note, sorry to all my readers that I've been bad and a bit inconsistent in doing my reviews. Writers block doesn't exactly help -_-; Look forward to tomorrow (or Wednesday) for a manga review!! (I PROMISE!!! >_<; )