Trauma Team is the third entry of this medical practitioner franchise for the Wii. The latest entry is the most ambitious entry in the Trauma series yet. How does Trauma Team differ from its predecessors and does it improve upon its traditional gameplay? Find out in the full review!

Trauma Team is the third Wii-bound entry for this oddly charming medical practitioner franchise. The game originally has its roots in the DS’ touch screen controls, but has established itself as a series that makes strong use of the Wii’s motion controls over time. This continues to be the case in the latest and most ambitious entry in the Trauma series yet. So, how does Trauma Team differ from its predecessors and does it improve upon its traditional gameplay? Why, I’m glad you asked.

The first thing worth noting about Trauma Team is that unlike previous entries in the franchise your skills will not simply be tested on the operating floor. In addition to the surgical gameplay that is par for the course in the Trauma games you will try your hand as a first-response EMT, performing endoscopic procedures, orthopedic surgery, diagnosing patients for proper care, and finally as a forensic pathologist (essentially a crime scene investigator). Each of these procedures have their own unique styles of gameplay, all of which require both the Wiimote and nunchuck for play. Upon selecting your desired doctor and respective episode, you will see a comic-like scene with still art utilizing very limited movement to set the scene for the upcoming gameplay. There is a lot of overlap with the characters you play, giving you a better look at how each of them behaves outside their own story. The stories are not self-contained even if you choose to play one doctor over and over however, as you must complete all of the operations for every doctor before the final episodes are unlocked that will introduce the true threat of the game that is alluded to in all of the individual stories.

There are six characters to choose from and each specializes in one area of medicine. There is the convict known only as CR-S01 who is the surgical practitioner that is standard from the previous Trauma games. You use different surgical tools that you select from using the analog stick on the nunchuck and utilize them by pointing the Wiimote at the appropriate point and performing a designated action. You will sanitize and cut open the operating area, scan for hidden abnormalities using an ultrasound, burn away undesirables using the laser, suture lacerations, and inject various forms of medicine, just to scratch the surface. Oh, and did I mention that our doctor serving a 255 year sentence is also an emo amnesiac voiced by Nolan North? Well, now I did.

As the EMT Maria Torres you will provide only the immediate care necessary to see that patients survive long enough to make it to the hospital and receive proper care. This includes the immediate treatment of fractures, burns, convulsions, hemorrhaging, and even cardiac arrest just to name a few. While the operation of the EMT is very similar to surgical gameplay, the big difference is that there will always be multiple patients that need attention and thus you must divide your focus between several patients while their vitals continue to drop from their various conditions. In spite of her profession, Maria is hardly cooperative and seeks to do everything herself. Hot-blooded and self-centered, she tends to rub people the wrong way.

Hank Freebird is a busy fellow who tries to juggle his work as an orthopedic surgeon with that of a superhero. How’s that feel, Clark Kent?! Whether fortunate or not, you simply control his stylings in the OR. Bone grafting is a unique style of gameplay when compared to either of the aforementioned types, carries a heavy emphasis on a continuous flow of the procedure. While excising something or molding a synthetic bone, you will follow a guide line while the screen pans slowly along your route. A steady hand is required over time and the music jams up in tempo as you continue to do well. You’ll also hammer in rods, drill holes in the bone to secure various synthetic parts, and so forth. I feel the orthopedic procedures have a great sense of momentum to them that makes it that much more rewarding to continue to do well and that much more disappointing when you mess up.

Then we have the endoscopic specialist, Tomoe Tachibana. In addition to getting her PhD, she also makes time to follow her obsession with the “path of honor,” as she is penned to be the heiress to a powerful Japanese clan of…ninja? Samurai? It’s just strange enough to fit right in with Hank’s superhero antics, but taken just serious enough to make it fail at being funny. Using the endoscope is without question the most unique style of gameplay in Trauma Team. You take a first-person perspective at the machine’s head and, while holding A and B, move the Wiimote towards the motion sensor to move forward, and away from the sensor to move backwards. The nunchuck’s analog stick controls the direction you are looking, while pressing C pulls up the menu for your surgical tools and using the analog stick to selects the appropriate instrument. Z makes use of whatever instrument you have selected. Much of your skill here is determined by your ability to quickly navigate through the fragile innards of the human body while not hitting the walls and injuring the patient. While it is unique and interesting, moving around in this fashion is hardly intuitive and can be somewhat troublesome getting accustomed to. Compounding the problem, an abnormality in the body must be identified by a target marker before you may operate on it, but at times you have to fiddle around with your distance or perspective to have it recognize the problem. It may be the most unique experience in Trauma Team, but it certainly isn’t the most solid.

The diagnostician of the team, Gabriel Cunningham, is the quick-tongued sarcastic one of the group. Almost without fail you’ll find a crumpled-up cigarette between his lips and he’ll be quibbling with his new computerized assistant, RONI. As Gabriel your job is to discover various symptoms that the patient is experiencing whether through blood tests, visual examination, X-rays, listening for abnormalities with a stethoscope, or simply talking with them. Once you have compiled all the symptoms that can be found, you return to the office to compare the symptoms with a list of likely candidates matching a known illness. Provided you have found all of the necessary abnormalities, you will be able to make a diagnosis. As the game progresses some patients will require multiple sessions of diagnosis to determine the root of their various disorders, but while the circumstances may change, your general approach will always remain the same.

Finally, we have Naomi Kimishima who Trauma vets may recognize from Trauma Center: Second Opinion. In Trauma Team she has entered the field of forensic medicine, leaving her days of frequenting the operating room behind. Instead, Naomi examines corpses and the belongings found on their bodies in conjunction with good ol’ fashion investigation of the crime scene to put the pieces together and uncover the truth behind the victims’ deaths. Luckily for her, she has a consistent helper in the FBI that will aid her by offering analysis on various findings and add to her information pile. Observations and evidence are recorded in the form of cards which, once enough pertinent information has been discovered, can be combined with another related card. This will allow Naomi to draw a new conclusion from the combination of facts, and slowly brings her closer to the ultimate truth behind each death. Additionally, Naomi has the unique ability to listen to her cell phone and hear the last words the victim uttered before their death. This strange ability has earned her the nickname of the “Corpse Whisperer.” Naomi herself is an extremely pragmatic sort, perhaps only further fueled by the knowledge that she has only a few months left to live due to a genetic illness. Naomi, reluctantly acceptant of this fact but not the type to lie around and wait for it, continues forward with her work in spite of it.

The characters in Trauma Team are all quite exaggerated in one way or another and the campy dialogue littered throughout the game reflects this tone. Some of the dialogue is simply horrible and feel like direct translations of the Japanese lines when they should have been adapted to be congruous with American speech. In addition to some bad dialogue, it also has some pretty bad voice acting working against it. That isn’t true across the board however, as some of the actors put in really good performances. Gabriel Cunningham instantly comes to my mind as the stand-out star. His lines are dripping with a blunt sarcasm that defines his character. However, other characters like the hospital chief are so horrendous that you wonder how they landed a role in the first place. It’s so uneven that it has me scratching my head on how these auditions went down. The music is an interesting point of the game. There’s a distinctly jazzy feel about the majority of music in the game, and really, with some of the low-beat tracks they sound more appropriate for a raunchy porno than for a medical game. Yet somehow, the more I listened to the music, the more enamored I became with the soundtrack. It’s undeniably catchy, even if some of it feels oddly inappropriate at first. The sound effects are largely appropriate but unremarkable. These are distinctly video game sounds, but Trauma Team never tries for even a moment to be anything more than a video game.

The visuals are a somewhat divisive issue for me in this game. On one hand, I appreciate the clean, colorful approach of the gameplay sequences, representing the innards of the human body in a non-disgusting fashion that is still easily representative of that part. On the other hand, the game replaces the visual novel-like character interaction bits from the previous games with a new comic book style aesthetic that, while it is initially stylish, comes off rather stilted and limiting when it tries to deal with all but the simplest of motion. Trauma Team obviously wasn’t a game built around a multi-million dollar budget, but I question the reason for the change if it was not going to provide support for consistent motion. Some scenes that should be somewhat dramatic come off looking silly because of this aesthetic, which is something that I can’t say about the static sprite images from the previous games. In the end, it was an interesting attempt to add a unique presentation to the Trauma series, but I feel that the cut-scene visual style falls short of adding anything to the overall package.

It is also worth noting that Trauma Team gave me a much longer experience than I expected. It easily offers over 20 hours for a first playthrough with additional difficulty settings and challenges for players after that. Keep in mind however that the investigation and diagnostic gameplay portions are vastly longer than the others, having you search around and listening to far more dialogue than any other parts of the game. While searching for that one last illusive clue or symptom can be tedious should you get stuck, you generally are given a pretty good idea where you should look for it. One last aspect worth noting is that Trauma Team has gotten better than ever at keeping you on task should you forget what you need to do next. Even if you put the game down for a few weeks and come back to it, you’ll easily be able to hop right back in thanks to the helpful, ever-changing assistant that accompanies you on every operation. The series has come a long way from the punishing first entry for the DS, and I would say for the better.

Trauma Team is simply the best entry in the series yet in almost every way. It’s longer, offers more variety, is full of personality, contains various interesting mysteries, and has various hooks to keep the player coming back. While it suffers from a hiccup in pacing occasionally and the visuals and voice acting achieve cringe-worthy status here and there, these minor symptoms don’t keep Trauma Team from being one of the more robust titles you’ll find for the Wii. Trauma Team is an enticingly cheap prescription that is already as low as $30. Pick up a copy and give me a call in the morning.

STORY: 7.0
GRAPHICS & DESIGN: 7.0
SOUND: 7.5
GAMEPLAY: 8.0
FUNFACTOR/TILT: 9.5

OVERALL: 8.5

– Andrew Glasco