Introduction

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Trauma Team is the successor to the Trauma Center series of surgery-action games for DS and Wii. The TC games got a lot of flack for being really hard and having really stupid sci-fi plots. Atlus took notice of this and made a much easier game with an even crazier plot that is (mostly) not sci-fi. Trauma Team's plot is centered around the characters, who include a superhero surgeon, two women who interact with ghosts(in different ways, for different reasons), a House knockoff, and Nolan North. Like all entries in the series, it has some pretty serious flaws, but I love it anyway.

I'll be playing the game on Specialist difficulty, which is the hardest one. You need to complete the game once to unlock it, but it makes the surgery sections about as hard as the Trauma Center games were.

Characters

Trauma Team has six playable characters, each with their own gameplay style and story. You can do one character at a time, but I'll be covering them in chronological order, for the most part. Let's meet the doctors:

Surgery
Prisoner CR-SO1 is serving a 250 year sentence for a horrible crime he doesn't remember commiting. He's also an amazing surgeon, so they let him out to do operations in return for a slightly reduced sentence.

Other than some interface tweaks, surgery remains mostly unchanged from the Trauma Center titles. You still use the same variety of tools to treat patients suffering from illnesses and trauma. It remains one of the best and most challenging modes.

First Response
Maria is a highly-antisocial paramedic. She hates working with, and relying on, other people. She's also being haunted.

First Response is my favorite of the new modes, and the best one for capturing the tension of earlier games. Using a simplified, and sometimes improvised, set of tools, you need to manage multiple patients at once, often with more arriving as soon as you finish. To balance this, you can lose a certain number of patients without failing the operation. Naturally, you can't consider it a true success unless you save every one of them.

Orthopaedics
Hank is my favorite character in terms of story. He's like if Jean Valjean was Batman. And a surgeon.

Orthopaedic surgeons work in the musculoskeletal system. With Hank, precision is key as you mainly work repairing and replacing broken bones. There are no vitals or time to worry about, but there is a Miss limit. You must complete the operation with fewer than ten mistakes. While I like the idea, and Hank himself, I admit that Orthopaedics can sometimes be repetitive. It also relies far too much on imprecise Wiimote gimmicks.

Endoscopy
Tomoe is a literal Japanese princess. She is in America to find her independence with the help of a shitload of daddy's money. She also talks about honour a lot.

Endoscopy involves using a small device called an endoscope to look inside of the body, where problem areas can be located and treated. It's a little like surgery, except with more moving between treatment areas. Honestly, it isn't really executed as well as it could be. Like with Hank, this mode relies on motion controls that can sometimes be finicky. Still, clearing out an entire area with perfect speed and precision can be very satisfying.

Diagnostics
Gabe is a little like House, yes, but there are two main differences. Firstly, he's not as misanthropic. Secondly, he didn't go to shit after two years. He has a robot partner.

This is the first adventure portion, and it mostly consists of performing various tests and looking for incongruities with the "normal" results. You'll also need to interview the patient and discern the symptoms through their mindless babble. In the end, you put the symptoms together to discover the patient's condition.

Forensics
Naomi, you may recall, was a playable surgeon in Trauma Center: Second Opinion. Since then, she's been diagnosed with a terminal illness which left her unable to operate. She works for the FBI now, solving murder mysteries. Dead people keep calling her cell phone.

This is the other adventure portion. In this one, you search crime scenes, bodies, and witness testimony looking for evidence, and then put the pieces together to eventually discover the entire truth behind a victims death. Sometimes, the game holds your hands a bit too much, and sometimes you end up on a pixel-hunt, but the mysteries are actually pretty interesting for the most part.

Fanart

Aculard captures the majesty of the Eagle Man with this rock solid picture:

The Let's Play Archive

Trauma Team

by Opendork

Introduction

Table of Contents

Fanart