Trauma Center: Second Opinion

Trauma Center: Second Opinion - (Wii)
Developer: Atlus
Format: Wii
Genre: Arcade

Clear! More guts and glory in everyone's favourite doctor's game

Fans of Casualty and ER are going to love this. For the rest of us, those for which the sight of a grazed knee and a drop of blood have us heaving, this is probably best given a wide berth.

The future is a dangerous place. Forget the likes of AIDS and cancer. Pah! They're the easy ones to treat. It's the Guilt virus that'll cause you all manner of grief, literal and metaphorical, in the year 2018. As rookie scalpel-boy, Doctor David Stiles, it's your job to mend the broken and fix the oozing. Through six increasingly complex storyboard levels you'll take on the plot of the terrorist-engineered Guilt virus while upping your considerable learning curve on the operating table. Teletubbies this isn't. It's gruesome, gory and great when you get close up on broken bones, putrefying sores and the blood fest that inevitably happens.

What makes this title a real stunner though, apart form the imaginative storyline and immersive nature of the action, is the superb use of the Wii's controllers. In one hand you'll wield the remote as laser, scalpel, forceps, swab and the like, in the other the Nunchuk serves to switch and manipulate the menus. It just feels right, it feels like you're really getting hands-on with the business end of the implements. Each operation will have you switching between eight different tools so watch what you're slicing and dicing. Had they bundled a surgeon's jump suit with each game then this would have scored 10 out of 10!

Along your stressful medical journey you'll enlist the help of Nozomi Weaver, handy for when you're juggling a swab and a defibrillator. A great adaptation from the franchise's first outing on the DS and controller-wise, a perfect pitch for the Wii. Nurse, nurse!

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