Trauma Center: Under the Knife

2024-02-19
I'm going to prematurely write a "review" for this now even though I didn't finish it. If I do come back and finish it I can update this.

And the reason I didn't finish is cause this game really is too hard. Fundamentally you're going to play this game because of the gameplay. The story is fine, little anime bullshit and lore about some doctor with magical powers or something. Music is whatever. Art is fine. But the actual gameplay is just one of those classic It Could Only Exist On The DS games. Surgery as a game? Oh hell yeah. But similar to real surgery this game is complicated and requires a lot of practice to get right.

The first several levels are fun as you're learning the ropes and things are still relatively simple. Sure you have to remember to disinfect before you suture or whatever but you likely will only a fail a couple of times along the way. Then you get to GUILT, the suped up monster diseases that are basically little parasites with varying behavior you have to deal with. You have to do the same procedures as before but now you have shit moving around and actively fucking up your patient so you have to not only deal with a lot of shit, you have to deal with it in the right order, and you have to deal with it fast. If you make a mistake, you lose. If you do something out of order, lose. If you do something well but not very fast, yep, you lose. I watched YouTube videos of people doing the level I quit on and even following them (admittedly at a much slower pace--seriously, people get GOOD at this game) I couldn't finish the Yin-Yang GUILT level. I tried it like 4 or 5 times and put the game down.

I'm stoked they made another remake of this game that apparently is vastly improved due to a more reasonable difficulty because the core gameplay loop IS fun. I just wish this game had been made without patients that bleed out in 5 seconds or a timer that seems like it was tuned for players on meth.