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NOT What It Appears to Be

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 27 / 36
Date: November 21, 2007
Author: Amazon User

I bought this game believing that it would allow me to examine patients and perform surgery... how naive of me. Unfortunately, this game is nothing more than a misogynistic soap opera. Notice the teen rating. This can't possibly be for the gore of surgery, since there is very little of that in the game.

Here are the things I don't like about the game:

1. Almost no surgery! In 3 "days" in the game (about 4-5 hours of play), I have had only one patient. I had maybe 3 minutes of "examination" (dragging the stylus across her abdomen) and about 5 minutes of surgery. The surgery was not even fun or interesting.

2. It is BORING. Most of the play consists of conversations where I (as a male intern) alternately offend and attempt to seduce the other characters. Also, I do not have control of these conversations. It's just a matter of tapping the screen through endless dialogue that bears a tenuous relationship with medical practice at best. In fact, some of the situations have nothing to do with the hospital at all, like when I went to buy a birthday present for my supervisor (a woman that I am apparently trying to seduce).

3. I have little control over the game play. As I mentioned above, I am permitted no choices regarding interactions with other characters. I just have to click around the hospital locations available to me at the time and talk with people. I have played this game for 4-5 hours altogether, because I keep hoping for more patients. So far it hasn't happened. There's nothing I can do to speed things along, because the game requires you to converse with certain people in a specific order for the game to progress.

4. It shows Japanese people in a bad light. No doubt about it. This issue was initially a minor annoyance but has become quite bothersome. Although the characters are Anglo-looking anime people, they have Japanese names and use -san and -sensei after the names. The way these people interact is not an American way of communicating at all. Also, occasionally an outburst will be printed in Japanese characters (foul language that they didn't want to translate?). My problem is not that the characters are culturally Japanese but that I don't believe they are an accurate representation of Japanese people (I think). The only Japanese people I know are culturally American, so I have no basis for comparison, but this game has made me wonder: are all Japanese men really dominating and disrespectful toward women? Are all Japanese women either angry/defensive or seductive/flirtatious? Obviously I don't really believe this, but the game would certainly lead me to these conclusions.

I wish I had researched this game before buying it. Sadly, it was an impulse buy at a mall store. I remembered having a surgery computer game when I was a kid and how much I loved it, so I immediately picked this one up when I saw it. What a disappointment. Please learn from my mistake!

If you like adventure games...

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 10 / 11
Date: December 05, 2007
Author: Amazon User

Unlike a similar game "Trauma Center", Lifesigns is not a puzzle game where you constantly do surgery over and over, it is an adventure game where you talk to patients, form relationships with coworkers and other things that actually form a storyline.

Yes the story may seem juvenile at first, and the translation is not perfect, but after one day I was hooked. The surgery is not as gimmicky as Trauma Center, and seems far more realistic.

If you like anime and want something more akin to a phoenix wright or hotel Dusk game, this may be for you.

Pleasant

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 7 / 8
Date: December 08, 2007
Author: Amazon User

Lifesigns: Surgical unit is fairly straightforward point and click adventure game, with endearing characters and well structured surgeries thrown in. It isn't groundbreaking, and I would have liked to have spent more time on medical game play, but overall the game is fun and a pleasant way to kill a few hours.

The surgeries start out very simple, but quickly progress to being challenging without being impossible. There's a certain glee that can only be achieved through successfully trepanning a skull. I found the surgeries themselves different enough to stay fresh, with graphics that nicely balanced a need for realism without going over the top.

My chief concern with the game is simply that I would have liked to have seen a higher ratio of game play involving medical issues as compared to running about solving the character's personal problems. Two of the five episodes take place on a vacation island, not the hospital, and much game time is spent running around matchmaking for your little sister and convincing a chief that little elves aren't trying to sabotage his festival (honestly). (Surgeries do take place in the island scenario as well, but they seemed relatively infrequent) I began to really resent those little elves for disrupting my surgical time.

Inside the hospital, I found the story lines varied and interesting. Once consequence of having fewer surgeries is that the patients you do have, have quite a lot of personality to them. There are sad moments in the game as a result of this attachment as well.

Lame

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 5 / 7
Date: January 11, 2008
Author: Amazon User

Lifesigns: Surgical Unit is less about surgery and more about...well, it's kind of hard to figure out. Mixing elements of Trauma Center: Under the Knife and the Phoenix Wright series, Lifesigns puts you in the shoes of Dr. Tendo, and follows his adventures and conversations in the surgical world. Where as Trauma Center was all about the deep gameplay, Lifesigns makes you navigate around the hospital, and talk, talk, talk. Seriously, there's so much talking and dialogue here that the game quickly grows boring. By the time you actually get to perform an actual surgery, you'll discover that the surgical gameplay is quite simplistic, and nowhere near as deep as you may be led to believe by the game's box and cover art. The surgeries themselves are few and far between, with all the talking and dialogue thrown everywhere else. As a whole, Lifesigns is easy to pick up and get into, and the game is well animated as well, but the shallow, boring gameplay and disappointing surgery elements are what ultimately kill the game. All in all, if you're expecting another Trauma Center here, you'll be quite disappointed, and you are much better sticking with that game instead.

The most impressive hair in any video game

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 1 / 1
Date: January 04, 2008
Author: Amazon User

Check out Professor Sawai, you'll see what I mean.

First of all: this is not Trauma Center. This is not Phoenix Wright. The series started in Japan way before the former, and though it's an adventure game, the feel is entirely different to the latter. Despite the soap-operaish storyline, this is ultimately more realistic than either game. Trauma Center was great fun, but lost the plot for me once I started drawing pentagons and fighting bug monsters in the operating theatre. Lifesigns sticks with fairly typical operations in a relatively realistic hospital setting. The simulation part is similar to the ancient PC game, Life and Death, in that you're expected to follow standard procedures and understand some of the basic requirements of surgery; there's little hand-holding here.

The major downside is that this is a translation of the second game in the series; the first was exclusive to Japan. Consequently, you're thrown into the story with only a basic explanation of who your character is, and the setting in which he works. I hope they eventually give the first game an English release. The translation is also simple and patchy; don't expect the outstanding level achieved by the Phoenix Wright games. Lifesigns sticks with the Japanese names for all characters, and the game has some awkward dialogue. The graphical style takes some adjusting; it's anime-style, but sort of sketchy. The character designs are great though, and the characters themselves are interesting and reasonably well-developed. There's also a very sweet little romance subplot between you and another intern doctor, if you do well enough on the operations for each chapter.

I'm not quite sure what the other reviewer meant when they said this game shows Japanese people in a bad light. First...it's a Japanese game, by Japanese writers, and the translation is actually fairly literal (hence some of the awkward dialogue). Also, it trades in some typical anime stereotypes - attractive but unattainable older woman (your supervisor), flirtatious but slightly inept young male protagonist, meek and devoted young girl (the nurse), etc.

It's true, there is a lot of text, and you spend a fair amount of time outside of the operating theatre. But this is the nature of the game; it's about the setting and the characters as much as the medical procedures. Sort of a dating-sim/adventure/surgery sim, if that makes sense. If you hate reading dialogue and description, skip this game; you'll get little out of it. Try Trauma Center instead, there's little characterization or dialogue and much more direct gameplay (even if the plot does turn ridiculous by the last few stages). But if you like a fun story and a little bit of light-hearted soap-opera with your simulations, give Lifesigns a try. I honestly didn't expect much at first, but I'm glad I picked it up!

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