Trauma Center: New Blood (Wii)

A trauma center is a major league hospital, equipped with around-the-clock surgical staff, state-of-the-art equipment, and as much pain and carnage as a Texas Chain Saw family reunion. Normally you'd want to spend as much time in one as you'd want to spend covered in rats, so you wouldn't think the concept would make for a nice, leisurely video game. Yet Atlus has already turned it into three, and its latest, Trauma Center: New Blood, is the best of the bunch.

Just like the other operations in the series, New Blood is a surgery simulation that has you slicing into patients, excising their tumors, removing bullets, draining blood, and sowing them back up again, all with healthy doses of antibiotics and, most importantly, fun. But despite its presence on the family-friendly Wii, this is not an easy game.

But before we get to the shattered arms, impaled hearts, and shot dogs, you should know that the game is about the surgical exploits of Valerie Blaylock and Markus Vaughn. The curtains rise in "Alaska--the frigid northern extremity of America." That is literally the first line in the entire game. Makes you wonder what they would've said if it began in Florida ("the long, hot leg of America"?) or Texas ("the giant bottom"?). After that, there are only a few plot points worth paying attention to.

In one, a rich patient complains that his appendectomy isn't costing enough, while across the hospital, a poor child without insurance needs the same operation but can't pay for it. So you bill the rich kid for two appendectomies, because, as Markus says, "Rich or poor, we're all the same under the knife." And you thought your HMO was crazy. At least Markus can back up his god complex with supernatural powers--he and Valerie wield the medical equivalent of bullet time, known as the "Healing Touch." It's all part of a wacky spiritual hoodoo both doctors buy into that has them saying things like, "As the stars have taught me...I am one with life...I am one with now..."

The rest of the dialogue and plot details that unfold between surgeries are as dull as local anesthetic. Sure, there's a game show that's a cross between Iron Chef and, well, surgery, plus a talking surgery dog, but these are things you can enjoy all while quickly tapping the A button on the remote to skip ahead. In fact, seeing the dog chime in between conversations is actually more entertaining if you don't stop to read what's actually being said.

Besides, the gameplay is so good you'll want to skip straight to it. While the Wii is chock-full of minigame collections trying to cash in on the system's expiring novelty, the Trauma Center series has developed an elegant, complex control scheme that believably and thoroughly adapts the system's capabilities to surgery. After hours and hours of play, you'll excise tumors with deft speed and precision. You'll quickly pluck bullets, drain the blood, use forceps to pinch the wound shut, and suture it like it's second nature before moving on to the next life-threatening injury.

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