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It's a tough life, being a surgeon. Endless patients, long hours, complex new procedures, and crushing responsibility are all part of the job. Being a video game anime-styled surgeon, on the other hand, is one of the coolest jobs on the planet. All the same drawbacks are there, of course, but the addition of a pause button, cute anime nurses, and a war on biological terrorism all add a certain something to the job.
Caduceus Hospital
In Trauma Center: Under the Knife, Derek Stiles is a new surgeon fresh out of school. Starting as a sawbones in a local hospital, events will propel him to the interational medical agency Caduceus, and eventually to the front lines against biological terrorists and their custom designed plague, GUILT. Though the story is completely non-interactive it's a blast to follow, with lots of well-defined and designed characters and situations. A little melodramatic and morally simplistic in some parts, sure, but it's an anime hospital drama so there's really no avoiding that. The plot does its job well, ending with a satisfying conclusion while putting Derek and his faithful nurse Angie in one challenging surgical mission after another along the way.
Of course, it's the operations that really matter in Trauma Center. Saving lives is what a doctor does, and there are dozens of ways in which people can get injured, wounded, infected, or just plain messed up. Trauma Center has a surgery for just about everything, and almost every level is a new challenge and a different procedure for dealing with the myriad ills that can befall the human body. Whether it's excising a tumor or dealing with the vicious insects of the GUILT plague that live inside the body, every day brings a new challenge. Thankfully, there's a nice, large toolbox availble to save lives with.
Where does he get all those wonderful toys?
The tools are arranged in two rows of five on each side of the screen, and touching the appropriate box turns the stylus into it. Scalpel, forceps, drain, scanner, antibiotics, syringes, and more are available, and almost all of them are immediately obvious in their use. Touch the forceps to change to them, and then apply it to the shard of glass sticking out of a wound. Pull the shard straight out and away from the injury, and then discard it in the tray that appears at the bottom of the screen. If the wound fills with blood, use the drain to clear it away by touching the affected spot and sliding the stylus up to apply suction, then dab on the antibiotic gel for small cuts or use the stitches in a criss-cross motion to suture up larger ones. Meanwhile, the patient's vitals are slowly falling as you play with their internals, and messing up makes them take a significant hit. Thankfully, a syringe full of what I came to call "the green stuff" can pump the stats back up, but losing a patient is still surprisingly easy to do. The positioning of the tools around the screen becomes second nature after a while, though, which is good because the game becomes brutally tough in the later stages.
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