"The transfusion of New Blood was a successful operation on this franchise"

Trauma Center: New Blood is the newest member of the increasingly popular Trauma Center series by Atlus. This is the third game in the series but is only the first true sequel as Second Opinion was mostly a remake of the original DS title.

Story

The story is quite similar to the previous incarnations of Trauma Center. The first few chapters are dedicated to introducing characters and familiarizing yourself with the controls. Once you get into the swing of operations you are informed by your mentor of sorts that there is a perilous disease lurking in your near future that you will have to deal with. However, for those of you who bemoaned the fact that a nonexistent sickness dominated the latter half of UtK you will be pleased to know that Atlus took those complaints to heart and balanced it out a little more. The new disease is central to the plot but with the underlying message being that doctors are supposed to save lives you aren't cutting apart demon fish and extracting gaseous needles like the last games.

Gameplay

Straightforward. You have the drain, scalpel, sutures, ultrasound, etc. The first three missions covers those elements quite well (as do the operation notes) so I'll pass it over.

This time you have two doctors you can play as: Markus Vaughn and Valerie Blaylock. They're essentially the same and who you play as doesn't effect the story but their Healing Touches (yes, Atlus kept the Healing Touch) are somewhat different. Markus slows down time like Derek, but Valerie freezes your patient's vitals.

Controls

This is where this game really shines. There are plenty of Wii games that have very good motion controls (Metroid Prime 3 being one of the best examples) but this game does an excellent job utilizing them. Everything feels fluid and manageable.

The wiimote is responsible for directing your actions and the joystick on the nunchuk is used to select your surgical tool. When you have to use the defibrillator or Healing Touch you press down Z and B in the case of defibrillating you jab them forward together like you're actually holding the paddles.

Graphics

Admittedly, this game fairly rudimentary graphics. The cutscenes are stills and text (voice-acted mind you. And fairly well at that) and the in-operation visuals don't render anything unimportant in much detail at all. You won't have your breath taken away by anything in this game but it's all about the gameplay for this one anyhow.

Difficulty/Extras

This game features the main story (obviously) but has a few other modes as well. Though I have yet to try it myself, it does feature a co-op mode where two people perform the operation together. It is only co-op however and unfortunately does not allow for two people to try and outdo each other while simultaneously performing the same operation on a split-screen (ala Guitar Hero).

You will also notice the little blue "wi-fi" marker in the corner of the box as well. Wi-fi isn't exactly a mode in it's own right however. After you complete an operation you can connect to the internet and get your ranking on an online leader board and see how you rank. The fact that the scores for each difficulty level aren't separated is something of a flaw but bragging rights for having the best score on Easy aren't exactly worth much.

Lastly I'd like to make a note of this game's difficulty. If you've played Trauma Center before you shouldn't get killed by this game. I had only played the DS version prior to this and have found it manageable. That said, New Blood is at the very least, a game of above-average difficulty. Newcomers will likely have to start on Easy mode for fear of being overwhelmed. Scoring more than a C-rank without practice after the first chapter and a half is quite a feat. After an hour or two most people should feel confident enough to try Normal.

Replayability

I have yet to finish this game in it's entirety but I will stick with it for a while after I do so. There are some unlockables after beating the story and trying to get into the Top 10 on the leader boards is a tempting mission. For the average person however you likely won't get more than 10 hours extra play after beating the story.

Final Say

Trauma Center: New Blood is another great game to be released for the Wii. It is particularly refreshing to not only get a non-multiplatform, non-minigame based title, but to also get one that provides an excellent degree of challenge really makes this a worthy purchase. If you have a Wii and want to try an innovative and fun game then grab this now since as we all know, Atlus likes to keep their games on the fringe of rarity at all times.

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 01/03/08

Game Release: Trauma Center: New Blood (US, 11/20/07)