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Trauma Center DS, will cause you to go to the ER.

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 11 / 17
Date: July 08, 2006
Author: Amazon User

This game is mindnumbingly hard not because its a very challenging but rather its set up to fail.Most missions thrust you into a situation with little indication of what to do. As the patients vital signs drops, you frantically poke at your DS trying to think on what to do. The nurse, who assists you, gives you vague ideas on how and before you know it you've failed the mission. It would take me an average of 10-15 failures before I finally won a mission. The last mission I played that made me quit, resulted in 30+ failures. And that's only being 1 hour and half into the game.

The graphics are crisp and clear. The storyline didn't make much of an impression on me. But I was probably too frustrated to pay attention to that. This game had a lot of potiental but killed it by constantly making you fail. Do not buy this game unless you have an extreme amount of patients, game collector who will keep it sealed, or you're a gultton for punishment. Whatever you do, do not buy this game for the hype. It does not live up to it.

Limited Game

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 2 / 9
Date: February 04, 2006
Author: Amazon User

Though Trauma Center is an interesting game for the DS, I would not reccomend you purchase it when there are so many other games that are more involved.

Trauma Center involves you being a surgeon. You perform different surgeries on people.

The game falls short in many areas. For one, I found the difficulty to be a little too high. This is because you might not figure out which tool to use exactly until it's too late. Even then, sometimes the characters will talk at the top of the screen and say things moments before you need to do them. You have the special power to slow down time when you are performing. Sometimes they will just screwm out to you to use this power, and if you don't your patient dies within seconds.

Another thing, sometimes the game becomes more tedious than fun. Even if you know what to do, it can be annoying to have to do the same 6 steps over and over.

I would reccomend that you buy Animal Crossing if you are looking for different.

New to DS and games in general.

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 3 / 15
Date: February 20, 2007
Author: Amazon User

I recently purchased a DS and this was the fourth game I bought. I wish I would have saved my money or purchased a different game. The characters are annoying and even though I perform the "so called skills" as they instruct you to, I can't seem to get past certain procedures (which adds to my frustration). Bottom line, unless you like to be annoyed - SAVE YOUR MONEY.

Why? Why? Why?

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 4 / 11
Date: October 20, 2007
Author: Amazon User

Why do developers make difficult games? Ok, so some gamers might like challenging (not mentally but mostly physically)games - so why not provide an easy mode??

This game has a unique concept. pretty good idea. However, the fact that it needs too much focusing and it's really hard, makes the game unbearable to play any longer.

I played it until the episode 3-6 or something. Thinking i will get into it more and it will get more fun. NO! It just gets more frustrating. Every single operation has the same elements: you start thinking it is an easy one (all the doctors and the nurse think the same thing as well)..well, wow, surprise, more things to take care of during the operation. at first this was kinda surprising so it was fun. But then, i knew that at every operation something had to go wrong. gets to be pretty boring. (whew doctor, now we can relax, let's close the incision....what!!! doctor, there is more!!! quick the vitals are dropping!!!) this is only fun when it happens once, not like 20 times.

you are required to be very precise, but the game isn't that price - it cannot detect the touches that well and the patient dies! the touch-screen technology in the world isn't at its best yet - meaning touch screens aren't 100% good at sensing. So why make a game that totally relies on the accuracy of the touch screen? Why not make it more forgiving?

I really hate games when it makes me fail 4, 5, 6 or more times. I play games to have fun, so doing the same thing over and over again makes me just toss the game away - instead of motivating me more - i guess there are people out there who are motivated by frustration.

I was still hoping that the game would get better until I read the walkthroughs on the net. It sounds like after a while it gets totally ridiculous and you try to kill the viruses or whatever at every operation with different forms. i cannot think of anything more boring for this game. So yeah, now i have no desire to play the rest at all.

Hand cramping, stressful frenzy of a game, not that there's anything wrong with that.

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 2 / 3
Date: May 14, 2008
Author: Amazon User

I've played probably 20 different Nintendo DS games to the finish and I have to say this is the most frustrating game I've ever played. I love the early missions and the creativity is awesome, but the controls are kinda blah. Several times you'll find yourself redrawing the zoom, over & over & over as your patient (& patience) dies. Redrawing stitches over & over gets tedious fast. The game has good intentions, but unlike most games that I just couldn't put down, this one I have to put down to release tension both in my hands and in my mind. I am looking forward to seeing the improvements in the upcoming release.

You Have to be Fast

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: July 21, 2008
Author: Amazon User

Speed is more important than precision in Trauma Center: Under the Knife. It's not a game I want my surgeon to play. We thought the game was fun for awhile, then the speed and skill level required became overwhelming. The soap opera story line was more irritating than inspiring. Unless you are a really good gamer, the diagnosis for this one is terminal.

Nurse, I need a 4-0 Vicryl on a... stylus?

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 12 / 15
Date: July 17, 2006
Author: Amazon User

(Full disclosure: The reviewer is a healthcare professional.)

While playing this game, I was reminded of another medically themed game from my childhood, a PC/Windows game that put you in the role of a cardiothoracic surgeon. It had a neat concept and great graphics, but it was literally impossible to play. As a joke, I installed the game in the OR staff lounge at the hospital where my parents worked and dared the staff to try it out. Out of over a dozen highly competent real-world surgeons, not one could get past the initial incision without killing the patient and ending the game.

I suspect that if any of them got a hold of "Trauma Center," we'd see an epidemic of trauma - to DS handhelds.

Leaving aside the rather unrealistic plot aspects and concept errors (who knew you could cut viruses out of patients?!?), I found the following to be among the more glaring flaws in the gameplay:

1) Maybe it's a case of bad screen calibration on my DS, but several of the controls seem quite poor - not at all what you'd want in a game that emphasizes precision. Most notably, it's almost impossible to get the game to recognize a proper suture. Grant you, this and problems like it have been endemic to medical games since the dawn of the genre, but you'd think someone would try to come up with a decent model for patient manipulation by now.

2) Unrealistic difficulty settings. It should not take an average player a score of dead "attempts" to figure out how to debride and suture a clean forearm lac. This becomes exponentially more annoying when you can treat such injuries in your sleep in reality.

"Trauma Center" is a good try at an innovative gameplay model. Sadly, despite all its promise, the flaws are just too severe to be survivable. To me, at least, this game is DNR.

What was i thinking!!!!!!!!

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 1 / 12
Date: February 26, 2006
Author: Amazon User

ok im the kid who reviewed on the 13 of feb. at that time i loved this game. not saying it is bad just saying that it does get repeditive. i put this down last week and have no rush to play again! the deep story line gets shallow by the 10 operation this is an ok game and will not dissapoint at a low price. all it is you may ask is talking about your physicodic german assistant who thinks that thinks of you as hitler to jews and african americans. but she may love you in the next mission and hate you the next.

This Game Is Frustrating

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 2 / 6
Date: September 16, 2006
Author: Amazon User

I love the idea behind this game and it's pretty impressively exectuted. I had three gripes though: 1) It's so fast paced that I found it really difficult to progress past the third procedure. 2)I couldn't get the magnify and reduce (with quick little circles) to work. This caused me great frustration. 3)There's no way to skip through the seemingly endless pages of character dialogue if you have to repeat a procedure a couple of times.
I quit playing it pretty quickly.

Fun for a while but it gets old

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 4 / 14
Date: June 02, 2006
Author: Amazon User

I recommend getting this game used. Its really one of those games that you play once but never again.

The game design is quite unique but I found it almost impossible to get above a 'C' in the operations. The story is a bit too flat and predictable.

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