At least Michigan is on that map. I live right about where that weird waterfall is, except there are no huge waterfalls here. Interesting...
Anyways, I just got a Wii like a week ago and I've always been interested in the Trauma series. Would this game be a good starting point or should I start with one of the previous games? I've heard that it's more accessible which would be a good thing for me.
This game is a lot easier and more varied than the Trauma Center games. I don't love every specialty involved, but I do enjoy the fact that it's not all just surgery.
I'd think this would be a good starting point, and if you find you love the surgery portions, you could dip your toes into the previous games and see how they grab you.
"WHEW! STABELIZED!"
Atlus: You think that was hard?
Me: Stabbing people and remembering colors? It reminds me of Trauma Center. Not hard, but having to be quick? Sort-of, yea--
Atlus: LOLOLOLOLOLOLOL WAIT A SECOND, MISSION ISN'T OVER!
(TWO MORE! FOUR MORE! FOUR MORE! FOUR MORE!)
FFFFFFFFF.jpg
I saved them all, but got a C because I screwed up the injections (stupid remote/waggle controls). I can't imagine Hank/CS/Tomoe's if they're this crazy. :lol
I bought the first Trauma Center for the DS day-one, i want to get back in the series but the first Wii game not only is a remake... it doesn't even have widescreen.
Sooo.. that's a no.
The second Wii game I read it's "X" years after Trauma Center 2 for the DS, even if it came out before that, but i don't really know if it's any good.
Trauma 2 for the DS... it's not one of my priorities right now, but again you guys tell me if it's any good.
And finally Trauma Team... since i live in Europe where the heck can i import this?
Is it the best in the series?
I bought the first Trauma Center for the DS day-one, i want to get back in the series but the first Wii game not only is a remake... it doesn't even have widescreen.
Sooo.. that's a no.
The second Wii game I read it's "X" years after Trauma Center 2 for the DS, even if it came out before that, but i don't really know if it's any good.
Trauma 2 for the DS... it's not one of my priorities right now, but again you guys tell me if it's any good.
And finally Trauma Team... since i live in Europe where the heck can i import this?
Is it the best in the series?
It's considerably easier, and much more varied than the other games, and (relatively) more grounded in reality. It's less of a hardcore-reflex-puzzle game and more like a... medical adventure? It depends on whether the series' brutal difficulty turned your crank in the previous games.
Trauma Center: UtK 2 is worth it for NeoGUILT if you enjoyed the first. New Blood is kinda meh, with the exception of Blaylocke's healing touch ability (no vitals dropping, but you don't slow down time. Useful if you know what you're doing and need the vitals to stop dropping as you deal with critical things quickly).
Team isn't bad. I have three more missions to do to complete the game and I've enjoyed most of them (the text adventures aren't bad, but not my bag).
Of course, I'm of the opinion that the series should stay on the DS or get slightly better at pointer accuracy. It's a bit finicky on pointing for me on the Wii now and then.
Okay, finally sat down and did the last three missions to complete the game.
The ending, bravo Atlus. However there is a few issues I have with it:
The doctor CS talks to being Derek? Is that right? I dunno, doesn't look like Derek, but it would be a nice throw-back to Trauma Center/Second Opinion considering the Naomi link. How did they mass-produce the anti-serum that fast? And why is Maria riding a parachute and nearly kiling her boss?
Also the last surgery/the climax "operation" is HELLA EASY. Holy fuck, I was in for some epic-battle with the way they made it sound and it basically boiled down to:
Disinfect, cut, drain drain drain, inject inject, drain drain drain anything near the membrane. LASER LASER LASER, INJECT x 3."
Once you get to the "heart stop" part of the operation, before you go into that part, top vitals.
Inject the heart stop. Pull membrane. CUT CUT CUT CUT CUT. (shouldn't be below 70 vitals if you did it fast)
OH SHIT, THE VITALS CUT IN HAL--
(Inject med)
ROSALIA VIRUS IS ERADICATED.
That's it? Seriously? UtK2's NeoGUILT last boss had me cursing for about four hours (mostly because I wasn't quick/precise enough). New Blood had me worried (but it was doable with Blaylocke). This... was pretty anti-climatic. I'm wondering if doing "Specialist" on it will make it Trauma Center hard. :/
Edit: And Tamoe's final two missions had me worked up waaaay more than this one. Seriously, what the hell.
Also, Kotaku for some strange reason has finally posted a review on the game. Rather late, but it was really really positive.
I expected Trauma Team to be a somewhat tired sequel, the fifth of a something that surely was tapped for all its best ideas by now. Not the case. Whatever you may think of Japanese-developed surgery games that involve macho surgeons and delicate ladies.. whatever you may think of a game that looks like it could be a bad anime or a bland third stab at the Wii ... think again. This game takes chances most games on any platform don't. It plays well, tells a good story in a great way. It should be on best-Wii-games lists. It makes the cut. Easily.
Just started playing today and got through everybody's 3rd chapter, with forensics being the most recent. That 3rd forensics chapter should be enough to nominate this as most depressing game of the year. fuck.
Just started playing today and got through everybody's 3rd chapter, with forensics being the most recent. That 3rd forensics chapter should be enough to nominate this as most depressing game of the year. fuck.
Well it took a while for me to come around to forensics. Endoscopy still sucks a big fat one, and the story is terrible. I mean, the actors do a good enough job, but they're given a fucking terrible script even by Japanese video game standards (Maria's stuff is pretty entertaining though).
Welp, nearing the end of the game and I'm glad. This game was a fucking chore, and partly due to Endoscopy and the earlier Forensics stuff, but mostly due to those long unskippable cutscenes. Fuck you, Atlus.
Welp, nearing the end of the game and I'm glad. This game was a fucking chore, and mostly due to Endoscopy and the earlier Forensics stuff, but mostly due to those long unskippable cutscenes. Fuck you, Atlus. I'm glad this game failed.
Welp, nearing the end of the game and I'm glad. This game was a fucking chore, and mostly due to Endoscopy and the earlier Forensics stuff, but mostly due to those long unskippable cutscenes. Fuck you, Atlus.
Welp, nearing the end of the game and I'm glad. This game was a fucking chore, and partly due to Endoscopy and the earlier Forensics stuff, but mostly due to those long unskippable cutscenes. Fuck you, Atlus.
Welp, nearing the end of the game and I'm glad. This game was a fucking chore, and partly due to Endoscopy and the earlier Forensics stuff, but mostly due to those long unskippable cutscenes. Fuck you, Atlus.
FWIW, you can always skip the opening cutscenes. I think they aren't that bad, but you're right in that they can be a tad long occasionally.
As for Forensics, I think they are mostly alright, although I must be dumb or something because it took me forever to figure out the codes to deactivate the cellphone bombs in the episode I played today.
FWIW, you can always skip the opening cutscenes. I think they aren't that bad, but you're right in that they can be a tad long occasionally.
As for Forensics, I think they are mostly alright, although I must be dumb or something because it took me forever to figure out the codes to deactivate the cellphone bombs in the episode I played today.
Okay, final thoughts now that I've beaten the game.
This could have been a really great game. My problem with it was the pacing. First, Endoscopy is a terrible, terrible thing to build 1/6 of a game around. It is easily the most frustrating thing I've ever played on a Wii controller. 8 chapters of Tomoe's stupid thrust control stick. 8. And only the last one was sorta okay just because there wasn't much room to move. But even then you're fucking around with the Z and C buttons, which are never used for major purposes like that. Stupidly awkward. And that's not to mention how unfun it was to actually navigate the insides of things.
I grew to like the two non-surgery games: Diagnosis and Forensics. Gabe's stuff was actually a nice break from the surgery, but even though I warmed to Naomi's stuff later on, it felt like too far of a leap from what everyone else was doing. Naomi's segments along with Tomoe's are the easiest to cut from the game and they only seem to be there because they ran out of ideas for actual surgery stuff (why not healing scars or making organs or something?
Alyssa could have probably used several new limbs, an nose, and an eye for fuck's sake.
So even though I grew to like Forensics near the very end (pretty much the last three minus
the bomb
), it felt so tacked on that I forgot I was playing a game about surgery and medicine and not Phoenix Wright or something (that said, I think there were a lot of little things Capcom could take from these segments).
My main issue was the story. And how the story was unskippable. And how poorly written it was. And how shoddy the translation seemed to be. And how the story was unskippable. Also, I hated how you couldn't skip the story.
I mean for fuck's sake. Every time you beat a level, you have to watch something. Every time you start somebody's segment from square one, you have to watch their introduction. If you want to get to the endgame, you have to watch everybody's little ending. And it wouldn't be so bad if the production levels were just a little higher or the writing was a lot better, because most of the voice actors really do a good job with a shitty script. It's hard to imagine this came from the same company and localization company as Persona 4.
That said, what I liked about the game were mostly Maria and Robot Man. Robot Man for the surgery gameplay that's been there since the first Trauma Center, and Maria for that too, but some added new stuff that I didn't see in previous games. I like that she has limited supplies, not even having so much as a drainer. Switching between patients was fun and tense too. I also think these segments made the best use out of the controller. Also, she was the most fun character to watch, so her story segments didn't really drag so much.
Superhero Man was all right. Next to Maria, I think he had some of the best motion control stuff, aside from the nunchuck rotation shit.
One last positive I'll mention is that in Diagnosis and Forensics, you were always given hints on what to do or where to go next. If there was a disease with some symptoms that matched, you could check out the others described in the disease's description. If you didn't know what to do with certain clues or if you had found all of them, the game let you know so you didn't spend needless time searching. It was a nice touch.
If I didn't have to sit through the shitty story and if I didn't have to get through stuff that was barely related to surgery, if at all (Forensics), or stuff that was just poorly designed in general (Endoscopy), then I would've liked this game a lot more. I liked the idea of playing as different members of a team, I just wish it was executed a lot better.
I want a sequel Atlus. This game was the best so far.
I actually like the cutscenes. Oh yeah, you realize there is an option to skip the cutscenes at the beginning of each chapter. Were yall just blind or something?
I should go back to New Blood, but I really hated some of the missions back in the day...especially the first game which just seems impossible to me. >_>;
I actually like the cutscenes. Oh yeah, you realize there is an option to skip the cutscenes at the beginning of each chapter. Were yall just blind or something?
Oh I skipped all of those, but those were the only ones you could skip. Most of the game you couldn't skip the cutscenes.
And that reminds me: Naomi's "mission complete" ordering of the events was boring as shit. Would've been better if it was actually ordered like a puzzle of placing the events from start to finish based on certain clues or to not do it at all. And why can't I just push A to skip past all that text, at the very least?
Oh I skipped all of those, but those were the only ones you could skip. Most of the game you couldn't skip the cutscenes.
And that reminds me: Naomi's "mission complete" ordering of the events was boring as shit. Would've been better if it was actually ordered like a puzzle of placing the events from start to finish based on certain clues or to not do it at all. And why can't I just push A to skip past all that text, at the very least?
Yeah, forgive me, it's been about 2 months since I beat it. And I liked watching the cutscenes, but would skip them if I lost and then replayed the mission.
I just beat the game tonight and really liked it. Good variety, interesting story and overall an enjoyable experience. Not a fan of the endoscopic bit (maybe if they gave a different motion to traverse instead of the shanking motion) but loved the orthopedic bits and the analysis bits.
Definitely recommend it to anyone that has a Wii and wants to experience a good 3rd party game that take advantage of the Wii's unique control scheme.
Endoscopy is pure torture. What the hell were they thinking? I'm also not impressed with the enormous quantity of really low grade plot cutscenes and dialog so far.
Reading non-spoilered advice earlier in the thread, I've decided to play the game horizontally rather than vertically. After having tried Endoscopy, I'll be glad to spread it out rather than getting stuck having to play it 10 times in a row :/
Endoscopy is pure torture. What the hell were they thinking? I'm also not impressed with the enormous quantity of really low grade plot cutscenes and dialog so far.
Reading non-spoilered advice earlier in the thread, I've decided to play the game horizontally rather than vertically. After having tried Endoscopy, I'll be glad to spread it out rather than getting stuck having to play it 10 times in a row :/
Endoscopy sucks but I don't think it's "pure torture."
I think the plot sequences are neat. The story itself isn't that great (except for the forensics parts, which I really like), but it all came out pretty well considering the game must have had a budget of like $50.
Gotta go get a plane soon so I'll keep it brief:
- I really liked the game a lot. I think the game as a whole was more engaging that the previous Trauma games that I played.
- I didn't generally like the visual presentation at all. I don't like comics or motion comics in general, so I can't really blame TT in specific. One thing I will blame TT in specific for is the story sequences dragging on incredibly long because of some of the pre-operation text. The volume of text inside some of the operations was also a little high to me.
- Characters were a mixed bag. I liked NOOOOOLAN NORTH as CRS-01, I liked the Forensics girl (what was her name?), and I thought Gabriel Cunningham was pretty decent. (?Native American?) Superman Bone Surgeon was kind of just there, Tomoé was terrible terrible terrible terrible. My experience with previous Atlus games was that they all felt very Japanese and culturally Japanese, but there was a certain shrillness to Tomoé's "Way of Honor" that just immediately bugged the hell out of me. Paramedic girl's character wasn't so bad but they could have turned down the volume a few notches.
- The story was pretty good and I appreciate how it all came together during the big twist 3/4s of the way through the game. I'm still unclear about Sartre's culpability
and why CR-S01 stayed in prison during the ending
- Endoscopy remainded torture through the entire game and two back to back endoscopy sections near the end was just... bewildering.
The bus crash / mall endoscopy mission was thematically neat even though I didn't enjoy playing it.
I liked all five other segments. Osteopathy was kinda just a breather in between more fun things. Only the Paramedic segments really gave me the kind of tension I felt near the end of the other Trauma Center games. I felt like none of the atomic things you had to do in any mode were really challenging, so the challenging moments for me were when the quantity of things to deal with started ramping up. I felt like the final mission was much easier than I expected and the final endoscopy mission took like... a minute! Anti-climax!
- Although I really liked both Diagnostics and Forensics, both had relatively slow UI / Navigational elements. Sometimes I felt like some of the prompts and patterns of moving from room to room were a bit slow. Both modes compared very closely to Phoenix Wright for me, which is a good thing.
- I liked the idea of being able to play the game non-linearly, but I used the left-to-right top-down method because I wanted to play the game linearly. It mostly worked, but a few sections were out of order. It would have been nice to "collapse" the timeline into a linear order and play it that way.
Diagnosing the soldier, Forensics on the skeleton, the bus/mall endoscopy, the ferris wheel paramedic mission, diagnosing Joshua, diagnosing the politician, any paramedic mission that involved straightening comically broken bones and putting splints on them, the osteopathy parts where you had to hammer in incredibly long nails/pegs/screws/whatever
- Tone down the boobs, please, Atlus.
- Not sure why the Doctor Medals unlock post-game instead of during the game.
Pretty much agree with most of that. Game would be better with snappier (and more easily skippable) cutscenes, but overall I enjoyed it quite a lot, found it more fun than the dedicated surgery games, and especially liked how the different modes (except endoscopy, which I did not find fun at all) interwove.
Great game all around. The presentation was quite fantastic, and I loved both the visuals and voice acting. The text tended to drag, but that's only a minor complaint.
I really had fun with most of the missions, and First Response was probably the biggest surprise of them all. Both Surgery and Orthopedics were pretty easy though, and I A- or S-ranked every mission my first time through. XS though, was nowhere to be seen (and I probably won't have the patience either). However, the variety and presentation more than made up for any hair-pulling difficulty of the original games.
As in real life, Endoscopy was horribly boring. It brings the money, but you'll be hard pressed to find a medical student willing to embrace it. Contrary to what some people may be saying, when the later missions are searching through rubble and cat intestines, you know the concept is stretched too thin. Also, Tomoe was a horrible character. I despised her story arc, and her honour. Having three missions in the final run was almost an insult.
I have to give a lot of credit to both Diagnosis and Forensics. I thought they were well-executed and well-paced, even though they represented a big departure. For Diagnosis, I completed that section while studying for my clinical exam, and it was great to see all the symptoms fall neatly into place with one diagnosis.
The Doctor Medals have just been unlocked, but I don't think I'll be going through them any time soon, if at all. I've had a good time, and I would hope more people pick this up, especially at it's current cheap price.
With the pedigree of composers on this bad boy (behind some of the Shin Megami Tensei titles), I had ultra-high expectations, and I was not disappointed.
These two especially brought back memories of Nocturne:
Finally beat the game. Took me a while to buy and play it since NoE sadly skipped it and I only recently modded my Wii again, but the wait was worth it. I enjoyed the game a whole lot for the most part.
I'll write down some quick thoughts in a lazy pro/con manner:
Pro:
- Great production values. The cutscenes look maybe a little too much like a flash animation, but the fact that there were hours and hours of quality voice acting easily makes up for it. No doubt this was not cheap and took a lot of effort.
- The variety in gameplay is great. While I don't like the gameplay of each character equally it was still a lot of fun to switch between the different playstyles and get some change of pace.
- I liked the story. Of course it's pretty cheesy stuff like in the previous games, but that's what I liked about. Pretty fun cast of oddball stereotypes, too.
- It's a long game. I think you could cut some fat here and there, but I can't complain about a twenty hour game these days. That's more than any previous Trauma game, too.
Con
- Too much investigation and diagnosis gameplay. I liked to play both Naomi and Gabe a fair bit, but it was just too much of it. In the end those parts were nothing more then a rather so-so visual novel with a simple logic (and trial and error) gameplay that was carried by likeable characters. And that became more and more apparent as the game went on and made me play many hours that stuff.
- The endoscopy gameplay was easily the worst part of the game. I had some fun with it, but the controls were just too tedious and not intuitive enough. Wonder how this could happen when the whole Trauma series otherwise represents super-precise, fast-paced arcade gameplay.
- Too much interrupting dialog during gameplay. That was a problem with the Trauma Center games, too, but I feel like it was more prominent here. It's just annoying when you're in the middle of something and have to listen to some (mostly) nervous and ultimately pointless chatter.
- A bit too easy. The Center games offered a better challenge.
So yeah, I really like it despite some flaws. I would still prefer the next Trauma game to have just the precise and homogeneous gameplay of the Center games, but this was a fun and worthwhile experiment.
But maybe I should better hope the next Trauma game will even happen...
