Medical simulations are something that surprisingly few commercial developers have ever cared to tackle. Why is that, when EVERY ONE of us can claim a vested interest in our bodies? I would attribute the dearth to the fact that realistic human anatomy didn’t come out so well from a 256-color, 320×240-pixel , DOS-based, keyboard-interface machine… oh, wait. Those were the machines that DID carry the only few well-known, play-doctor sims. Could it be a genre that is viewed too intense, gory or scary for impressionable children, now that representations of the ooey-gooey are not so limited?

Not for Atlus. Gotta hand it to them: they know how to take command of the smaller, serious games markets and make a smart, hot-selling product every time. It’s how they popped out Trauma Center: New Blood for Wii, which I find to be the most invigorating of Atlus’ three forays into the O.R. thus far. It’s punishing and aggravating, but, as a totally original story made from the ground up for the Wii, it’s a REFINED sort of punishing and aggravating. Skillful nunchukery lets you switch instruments at a speed lightyears beyond the stylus approach on DS, which, incidentally, also required that you switch instruments lightyears faster than you were able. With the addition of a second player, I’m sure you could even move at the speed of real doctors and still be OK. One further little personal observation: for tools like the drain and the laser, the implementation of rumble — something I had all but ceased to notice since the N64 bowed out — is completely unique and as life-like as possible.

Nintendo still being first and foremost a family-friendly company, they do what they can to get around some of the hair-trigger content, like covering up nudity, omitting certain organs and diseases, and keeping the palette away from “blood and guts”, but these formalities don’t harm the end product.

New Blood is indeed a welcome transfusion.

Posted on February 26th, 2008 by katie