Here's my review of Trauma Center : Under the Knife 2. It's hella long because I took a 10 star review of it and tore the fuck out of it. Hence, the title.
The link to the 10 star review:
http://www.gamefaqs.com/portable/ds/review/R126657.html
My review: [Warning: Spoilers for TC:2. But it doesn't matter because not that many people have played TC 1 and TC:2 isn't worth your time ANYWAYS.
In Response to “Derek Stiles and Angie Thompson are back to save the world from GUILT once and for all!”
Fellow gamer, I see you have quite a fondness for the second Trauma Center game to come out on the DS. And because of that, I feel that you were too quick to lavish praise onto a game that certainly did not deserve it. So, I feel compelled to write this in response to your review and write point out some things you missed in your haste.
The first game of this series was a very different game, I agree. In fact, it’s almost as if this game is completely unrelated to the other one. The character quirks in the first game that endeared the characters to me are completely lost or forced in this game. The change in the art style didn’t help, either. The new art style came from the re-release of the first game that came out on the Wii, and I’m sure the art style would have seemed fine to anyone that played that version first. However, I, as I am sure many others did, played the original on the DS first, and the new art style only made the forced dialogue and strange characterization even more jarring.
Of course, this game is first a surgery simulation game and a story second. It would have been nice if the game had adhered to that for the first half of its duration; the story seemed like a badly written fan-fiction, with the operations as more of an aside. The formula was something along these lines: There would be some dramatic tension between Derek and Angie, followed by someone from the operation development department coming over to remind the game it’s not a fan fiction, and a hastily thrown in operation that breaks the pace. Luckily, it seems to remember it’s an operation game in the second half of the game, and acts like it. However, it still left a bad taste in my mouth.
On a positive note, the idea of interactively performing surgery is still around. In the last game, the latter half of it was almost exclusively operations on the 7 strains of GUILT. They improve on that in this game by varying the operations as you go along. At the same time, however, it deteriorates the experience because it eliminates a feeling of progression. You go from operating on four patients in a row with the new GUILT in this game (called PGS – post-GUILT syndrome) to operating on someone with burns. Of course, there is a point in the game where this is explained very nicely and almost required. At that point, it works very well in the story. However, for the rest of the game, it doesn’t work nearly as well, especially towards the end. The variety is nice but forced, with a feeling of “Hey, since you’re playing a surgeon, we’re going to just throw in some operations while you read the story!”. The feeling of progression through the game is also sacrificed for this.
It may seem like I’m making it impossible to be happy with the game for the developers, since I didn’t really like the focus on GUILT in the first game or the spastic altering between PGS and regular operations. And I don’t want to point out a flaw without a solution, and fortunately, that solution is very simple. Lessen the variety that the second game offers, but still keep it. More importantly, however, give the players a reason to care about the regular operations they’re doing. Instead of having nameless soldiers get burned, have a main character or two get burned. Hell, save a dog that you’ve grown attached to get shot, like in Trauma Center: New Blood. That was a fantastic idea for an operation. In fact, they could have done that for more of the PGS operations too; there was a perfectly good family you could have been trying to save from it, which would have been a great addition. I’m not saying get rid of that variety; just don’t make it obvious you’re just shoving random operations in there.
There was a lot of difference between this game and the last one, but not a lot of difference between this game and the entire series. This is shown easily by the fact I knew how to do almost all of the operations before I actually did them, because I had played all the previous games. I would gladly give credit to Atlus for its ingenuity of these operations if it had been the first time they’d used them, but many were ideas simply taken and rehashed in this game. In addition, it just adds to the feeling that some of the operations were merely asides to keep the title of “surgery game” and not “fan fiction”.
You may be able to excuse my likening of the game to a fan fiction by saying it focuses more on character development, ambitions, and behavior. But the more you try to praise the story, the more the initial flaws I’ve pointed out become obvious. If the story focuses on character development, ambitions, and behaviors, why is it that the characters in this story seem so much different than from the last game? Well, as an aside, the main characters are fairly accurate, given what happens through the story. But it was always the supporting cast that made the game for me, and they’re the ones that have been replaced by shells of their former selves. I don’t know a Sidney that doesn’t have his unwillingness to lose a fight unmentioned; I don’t know a Tyler that calls himself a demon; I don’t know a Cybil that isn’t a hardass and I don’t know a Nurse Fulton who completely baby’s the main character.
And if this game takes place three years after the original, I think I must ask the question on everyone’s mind: What are the chances that Derek and Angie really haven’t gotten together? The pairing was heavily hinted at in the end of the first game, and I honestly had no doubt in my mind. Atlus had told a very successful story in the first game, and then they decided they wanted more money off of it – after a remake – so they messed with the ending of the first game and released a badly written sequel.
Finally, Atlus didn’t even have the balls to put a decent picture of the two together at the end. Yeah, they were standing next to each other, but hells, they were standing together at the end of the first game too, and I think they were holding hands in that picture. This game is guilty of one of the flaws numerous games have: Not giving a definitive ending to all of the plot points brought up during the game. Okay, in the end it says that Derek would be a great surgeon forever and whatnot, “with his loved one at his side the entire way”. But that is so vague. “Loved one” could refer to a sibling, for crying out loud. It’s clear Atlus was too scared to put anything resembling an absolute finality in the ending.
Atlus continued its trend of rehashing old things with the appearance of old GUILT with some new tricks. The tricks spice things up a bit—well, okay, they’re really the same GUILT with another step added in defeating them—no, they’re actually just poor attempts at making the GUILT more difficult to defeat. Really, the previous GUILT stays at its previous difficulty, with the only nuisance being the fact the nurse is walking you through operations that anyone whose played the game before knows how to do. As for the new GUILT, I found some of their tactics merely annoying – such as the one that zooms across the screen at ridiculous speeds, requiring you to slather gel on is before you can cut it – to downright ridiculous.
Finally, Atlus’ insistence on being unoriginal comes to a climax when their last operation is just all of the previous GUILT operations thrown together with an annoying-as-all-hell piece thrown in between. This was probably meant to make the ending seem more epic, as you beat all of the GUILT at once. Due to the frustration from that bit in between, to the fact all of the GUILT seemed substantially harder in this incarnation than individually, and the fact that Atlus had already rehashed so much in this game makes the attempt fall flat on its face.
When you mention that there are new tools in the game, it is very nearly a complete lie. The combination of the magnification tool and zoom tool is hardly new. In the first game the same basic thing was accomplished by separating when the two needed to be used. And I can’t help but question whether the change from zooming in and out to panning across the organ is an upgrade—frequently, I found myself using precious time to search the organ for anything else I needed to find rather that just being able to zoom out and see. The massaging of the heart, the defibrillator, and the penlight aren’t new either – all of these appeared in the Wii versions of the game. The air compressor falls into the category of gimmicks, because you use it for one strain of GUILT and that’s it. Finally, I don’t even know why you mentioned the culturing of a patient’s skin as something new because it’s not new and you even pointed that out yourself.
The game play is so similar I’m not sure I can agree that it’s been improved. The sutures do register somewhat more often, but it’s a marginal improvement. As for the tools being more precise, I simply chalked that up to my hardware upgrade from the DS to the DSi, which doesn’t require any calibration. As for getting an “S” rank on every operation, I felt that almost all of the operations from the first game were very possible without the Healing Touch. There were some in the Second Game, however, that felt so gauntlet-like I couldn’t pass them without using the Healing Touch. Perhaps that was the cost of being able to use the Healing Touch without a penalty. But that may have been due to the fact I didn’t replay them very much. Although that one operation that forced you to use the Healing Touch really ticked me off because if it hadn’t been so unfairly stacked I could have done it without the Healing Touch. Damn storyline.
I thought the first Trauma Center was hard, but not impossible, save for the seven operations at the end that were meant to be. It was on a good and mostly consistent difficulty – or, rather, it had a consistent difficulty curve. In the second Trauma Center, the difficulty is very randomly curved, with a few easy operations punctuated by a much harder one. Again, there is one point in the game where this is validated, but it’s present in more than just that one point.
As for failing operations, it was much more common for me to fail because I ran out of time than the patient actually dying. The last operation is a superb example of this. Due to my attempts to keep the patient alive, the ten minute time limit simply flew by. And in the operations with multiple patients, if you got a certain amount of them, back up would usually arrive and it would be okay if you ran out of time, making it, ironically, easier than some of the multiple-patient procedures.
Graphics have never mattered much to me, but since you brought them up I will as well. They’re great and I think that the operation graphics, while not having changed much, have been subtly improved. As for the character graphics, as mentioned above, the change in this game is jarring because of the writing, but that’s mostly a matter of opinion.
As for the music, again, it’s a matter of opinion. I preferred the music of the first game. One thing that is not a matter for contention, however, is that the music, and the game in general give a large feel of trying to be epic; it falls flat on its face. And I can’t help but wonder who agreed with you that the last song is epic, because I’m sure that anyone who’s heard the last song from Trauma Center: Second Opinion would disagree. Not only that, but the music for the last boss didn’t really fit in my opinion. It was too abstract, I think, for the seriousness of the game and a surgery.
Trauma Center 2 wasn’t a bad game, but definitely lacks the things that made the first great. Of course, it couldn’t be exactly the same – else wise, it would be the same game. But it lacks the charm of the old characters, the seriousness of the story, and the feeling of accomplishment that you got from finishing all of the operations. Overall, it has the feeling that Atlus just ported the operations from other games onto this one, threw a crappy story together, and sold it for more money, because Trauma Center 2 didn’t need to be made. It was a good story and told in full by the end of it.
TL;DR version: TC:2 sucks and didn't need to be made qq.
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