Trauma Center: Under the Knife

My longest-tenured video game in my backloggery, Trauma Center: Under the Knife had been waiting for years to be beaten. I never thought playing the game would be a hassle or anything- something about the anime-flavored simulation covering a job that doesn't get used much in games seemed to be on the same wavelength as Phoenix Wright, and I was looking forward to finally getting around to this. While Phoenix is incredibly story-heavy while remaining mostly light-hearted, Trauma Center was serious as a heart attack and survives on the strength of its gameplay alone. Sure, there's a story running along here as you follow new surgeon Derek Stiles on his way to becoming a master surgeon, but it's all just sugarcoating the core of the gameplay- lots and lots of difficult surgeries. You have ten different tools to cut your patient open, drain infected areas, suture wounds, patch them up, whatever. Trauma Center feels perfectly suited for the DS as you can quickly tap away with the utmost precision- I can't imagine trying to complete some of these surgeries on a Wii as Stan did, because later levels must have taken me a dozen attempts to beat. It also makes for a good "pick-up and play" style game that works so well on the DS, as no single segment takes more than ten minutes to beat- unless of course, you have to retry multiple times. I am slightly interested in the sequel to this game, but after that the third game in the series is Wii-only, so we'll see if I stick around to play the whole series.