Is it still the sincerest form of flattery if you're imitating yourself?
Surgeon is one of the many occupations that I could never hope to hold. My hands are too shaky as a result of years and years of high school engineering classes where I was forced to draw perfect circles and abstract shapes under threat of a B. But instead of crying in a corner over lost possibilities and the ever-growing list of Things I Can Never Accomplish (such as meet Santa, become a Batman villain, and consummate a relationship with a sex-changed clone of myself), I found solace long ago in the niche (read: Atlus) DS game Trauma Center: Under the Knife.
Bringing together my unique skills of dexterity and iterative repetition, the original game lit a fire in my soul and allowed me to have more fun performing “surgery” than any real surgeon could ever have. Fuck mitral valve replacements! I was shooting lasers at heart-spiders and disarming bombs! Under the Knife has about as much to do with actual surgery as CSI: Miami has with actual police investigations, there are common elements like police and magnifying glasses, but most police don’t drive Humvees and speak in one-liners.
Mentioned in the same article.
The original game really had a knack for taking very serious topics like death and disease and ballooning them up into cartoonish exercises of coordination and mental acuity. It was like candy for the mind. With so many different procedures to grapple with and neat little tricks and maneuvers (like raising heart rate using only biotic gel) the game would have been fun as just a Tetris-style endless action puzzler, with a constant barrage of cuts and tumors that had to be meticulously disinfected, and stitched, then drained, cut out and patched over, then OH NO A SUPER VIRUS HAS EMERGED LASER THAT MOTHERFUCKER.
Laaaaaaazer
But, the game had an interesting little backdrop and a pretty compelling story to boot. The finale in particular blends the gameplay and story so well it’s hard to imagine them ever being separated.
Following this unique little masterpiece Atlus forged into Wii territory with a sort of sequel and a sequel that I guess wasn’t really a sequel given this DS game I’m reviewing coming after it and having an actual incremented numeral in the title. But whatever! Using a Wiimote seems so wrong! There’s no contact, no catharsis to your actions. It’s like trying to drive a car using robot hands that are controlled with a steering wheel you operate from the backseat. It’s a level of removal from the level that’s already far removed from actual surgery.
ANYWAYS. Trauma Center: Under the Knife 2 comes along to the series’ home console with a brand spanking new integer at the end of it. You would think I would be loving this shit. And to tell the truth I did… back when it was called Trauma Center: Under the Knife.
It baffles me that this title would come after not only games like Pokemon Diamond that was able to utilize so many DS online features, but also after its Wii counterpart which had numerous improvements to the formula, an almost entirely new story, AND an online component. Under the Knife 2 shares only the adjustable difficulty and a few new surgical tools that were in Second Opinion. The story is essentially a rehash of the first game’s with the same viruses and characters making the rounds, and no real steps have been taken to innovate the surgeries apart from some extremely gimmicky operations like performing in the dark and while being photographed.
It’s just a shame to see a new entry in this series become a bargain bin DS game that is by nearly all accounts inferior to its progenitor. In such a bizarre and imaginative niche surely there could have been some innovations made to the formula: new viruses, a new story maybe? How about this: a rogue doctor from your clinic’s past formulates a virus specifically to confound surgeons so that he can emerge from the past and regain his lost glory. However, the virus evolves and it’s up to YOU, yes YOU to save the day. You get to introduce all these new characters and even do that weird Japanese thing where we learn a moral about doing your best or being honest or whatever.
And I learned a serious lesson about honesty, and that a penny saved is a penny earned.
The point is, it isn’t hard to put a new spin on an area that really hasn’t been explored all that well. This essentially leaves us with two remakes and a legitimate-ish sequel without a number. WHY. Surgery is fresh territory for video games, and being able to morph it into something mechanically pleasing and fun was one of the true hallmarks of not only the first game, but of the DS. Though the new Wii game, Trauma Team, could revitalize the series, seeing Atlus crank out such a shameless cash grab like Under the Knife 2 hurts me on a level I haven’t been hurt on since the opening sentence to this article.
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