Trauma Center New Blood: The Latest Sequel in Surgical Nintendo Wii Games

The company that brought the first Trauma Center role-playing game to the Nintendo gaming systems has outdone itself once more. Trauma Center: New Blood offers more options, greater surgical procedures, and higher risk operations. It does all this without adding any blood-and-gut scenes often found within the gaming world of RPGs in the lines of military and gang-style gaming. This is an emergency room, a place where some of the most blood and gore exist on a daily basis in many hospitals in the world yet the developers of Altus created the game without desensitizing our youth to the violence in the world and at the same time they brought us a game that has the potential to bring more young people into the folds of medicine to help people!

The website for Trauma Center New Blood currently lists the game as unrated but the copy I received for Christmas carries a rating of Teen; however, I believe it is a game that a younger audience might find interesting, perhaps slightly below teens. I can imagine an 11 to 12-year-old enjoying this game depending upon the maturity of the child. Parents should visit the Altus website and local video game stores to view the games personally before making a decision against purchasing this game for a child just shy of teenage years. The graphic images remind me more of the videos shown in grade school health classes when teaching about the digestive tract, reproduction, sinus functions, and heart areas. It is not cartoon-ish in any way but it is not bloody or gory either. I can envision this game being an excellent addition to any child currently taking a class on CPR and/or Allied Health Services of any variety.

The game takes place in a remote area of Alaska in the Montgomery Medical Hospital. Director and physician, Dr. Miles Hoover hires two physicians to care for the patients in the surrounding area. Dr. Markus Vaughn comes to the Alaskan area after resigning from his position in research under the tutelage of Lloyd Wilkens. The 34-year-old doctor tends to become a bit annoyed when patients come into the hospital around the time when he has after-work extracurricular plans such as a dinner date but overall, he appears to be a likable fellow. By complete contrast, Dr. Valarie Blaylock, 28-year-old physician, is calm, courteous, and hopes to learn as much as possible about caring for patients while working at the Montgomery Medical Hospital under the tutelage of Dr. Vaughn.

Additional employees include a nurse, Marcy Bloom. She is hard working and enjoys working with the two doctors on staff. Her kind and courteous manner brings a light of joy from her patients. Elena Salazar also makes a trip to Montgomery Medical. The 20-year-old nurse calls ahead to have the doctors prepare for the incoming patient suffering a gunshot wound to the chest. Nurse Salazar decided to join nursing to help others after Dr. Vaughn handled her care during a life-threatening trauma. Today, she works as a nurse helping others thanks in part to the care provided to her during her time of need.

The object of the game is to learn to provide efficient and competent medical and surgical care to patients who come to the hospital for treatment. The locals are experiencing growing pains after spending many years under the care of long-time physician, Dr. Hoover but in time and with a bit of luck, they will come to trust the two new doctors as well.

The mountainous region of Alaska with the ice and snow can cause major accidents. Various cases come into the little remote hospital doors. The two doctors on staff care for each patient using a variety of techniques and equipment available to treat the patients with the best of quality care including ultrasound, open heart surgery, and other variety of surgical procedures.

It is possible to play the game using the Wii-mote without Nunchuk but the Nunchuk makes it easier to access surgical tools. The joystick of the Nunchuk allows for the changing of various pieces of equipment. The C button in addition to the A and B buttons allow for additional healing touch. The Z button on the Nunchuk is also available for use along with the A and B buttons for the use of healing touch. Healing touch requires reaching a specific point in the game before it is available for use.

The Wii-Mote control unit offers a variety of uses as well and is available as a single-use device though it is easier for game play when using both the Mote and the Nunchuk. When playing without the Nunchuk, the Wii-mote's control pad is available for use when selecting instruments and equipment. The A button uses the equipment, confirms menu selections, and progresses the game through dialogue and various scenes. The minus button on the Wii-mote fast-forwards through dialogue scenes as well as operation help messages. The plus button pauses the game and accesses the menu for more information. The 1 and 2 buttons in addition with the use of the A and B buttons add the healing touch when not using the Nunchuk but again, this is only available after reaching a specific area of the game.

As with other Nintendo Wii games, it is important to use the wrist strap to prevent the hand-held equipment from causing physical damage to other parties nearby and to save the television screen from certain death should the WiiMote release from the players' hand and go wheeling into the glass screen causing the death of the television even if the unit arrives at the Television Medical Center immediately. Few if any television sets recover from a direct impact hit by flying WiiMotes so it is best to play it safe by using the safety strap and practicing safe playing maneuvers such as standing as far away from the screen as possible, holding tight to the Wiimote and Nunchuk, and most importantly by stopping by the Nintendo website to obtain the updated and stronger straps available from the company at no extra charge. As with any accident, prevention is the greatest cure.

The game begins at chapter 1. The player chooses a username that allows the scoring from the game to show on the television screen. With internet access, the score becomes available online as well. This is a nice feature that allows players to check personal scores against others. It offers a nice bit of safe competitiveness while enhancing the brain cells at the same time.

Configuration settings include the ability to turn the sound off and on for background music, sound effects, and character voices. The hand-unit rumble contains the ability to turn off and on as well. Unfortunately, the ability to turn off the required acknowledgment of the nurse's instructions or information is not available. This downside slows the ability to get into the procedure, do the job at hand, and get out while saving time and the video game patient's life. The lack of being unable to turn off the acknowledgment, IMHO, lowers the score of the gamer because it wastes far too much time that can otherwise be there to increase skill level, lack of mistakes, and add tremendous levels of speed.

While caring for the patient during the surgical procedure, the nurse is talking throughout, literally dictating what the surgeon must do and in what order, which is completely ludicrous given the fact the surgeon knows more about surgery and has certification as a surgeon whereas a nurse does not. Granted, this is a game and not true surgery but for anyone having worked in the field of medicine, it is no secret that the surgeon makes all decisions in the operating room, not the nurse. As a former medical transcriptionist, I find this to be a major pet peeve particularly after having transcribed endless numbers of operating reports over the course of more than six years while working for a national service that had accounts in some of the largest teaching hospitals in the country if not the world.

Before the surgeon can proceed to the following procedure, it is necessary to click the button to make the nurse be quiet before the surgeon can follow through with the procedure. This bug, if that is what it is desperately requires a patch to stop it from occurring. It is annoying and costs valuable time that relates to lower scoring points, which at the end of the procedure, if one can complete the procedure with all the interruptions, can lead to a failed operational procedure forcing the gamer to begin again only to face the same series of annoyances as before. Altus should make some type of patch available to remove this restriction within the game.

The above restriction is unnecessary because the designers have built tutorials into the game to teach the gamer how to complete various surgical steps and in what order. Techniques that are more complex have more than one tutorial available and there are no limits on how often one can return to a tutorial to better learn to adjust for accuracy to reduce and even eliminate mistakes during actual game play. The constant onslaught of directives from the nurse during game play becomes irritating and overly redundant.

Another downside of the game play is the ability to keep the cursor or game dot within the set screen. After multiple attempts to correct for sensitivity, it is still extremely difficult to hold a steady hand when attempting procedures such as applying stitches or using the scalpel to make cuts into the body for surgical procedures. Game play with the Nunchuk is a bit easier than without because the joystick allows one easily change from one item to the next; however, this also requires a tighter control when it comes to sensitivity. If the company could force the cursor pointer to remain within the realm of the television screen, it would highly increase game play.

Prior to each procedure, there is a conference with the nurse or other personnel to give a history of the patient and the accident along with vital statistics. One specific conference includes vital statistics and sustained injuries as a patient comes into the hospital after having an accidental meeting with one of the local grizzly bears.

During each procedure, the Nunchuk and/or Wii Mote is available to pick and choose various instruments and chemicals necessary to treat the patient, sew up any open cuts and lacerations, apply antibiotic ointments, additional blood from blood loss, and stabilizing the patient before sending the patient to a room. The nurse on call will monitor the patient until discharge.

Following each successful procedure, a screen will come up showing a variety of information regarding the success of the doctor's skill levels. It includes items like time of procedure, skill level, mistakes make or not, and bonuses for no mistakes. All these translate into skill levels that give the physician a letter grade.

The informational event will continue until the post operative procedure is over and the patient is well. If further events occur, the physicians will return to work and once again receive a graded assessment of the work, which like previous works, can upload to the internet if the Nintendo Wii has internet service through a wifi internet connection or hard-line internet connection.

The next event takes place once the previous one is complete.

Trauma Center New Blood offers the ability for multi-player but only up to two players per game. There is a lead surgeon and then a co-op surgeon. The A button on the Wii Mote switches between surgeons.

The Trauma Center New Blood offers difficulty settings of easy, normal, and hard.

This video game is extremely fun to play even with the annoyances of the nursing staff attempting to run the operating procedures; however, the director of the hospital is overly harsh when the gamer cannot complete the specific event in the allotted time. The director explains how the lack of ability to complete the procedure forces the two surgeons out of the field of medicine forever, which is a bit harsh if you want an honest opinion. This is particularly so given the difficulty of providing surgical care with the flawed system where one cannot do anything without acknowledging a nurse's input before the game allows one to continue. If Altus wants to make this a great game, the company should create a patch to eliminate the need to acknowledge the nurse statements so the gamer can get into the game, do the job at hand, and get out. Furthermore, there should be more control over the cursor positioning. Even with adjusting sensitivity, it does nothing to help control where the cursor is half the time or how to keep it within a specific area for a particular task.

The game should have had at least a little extra time to work out some of the kinks as mentioned above before sending to the beta testers or better still, the company should find better beta testers that could recognize these types of problems exist on this game. A few tweaks here and there, perhaps in the form of a series of patches would make this the ultimate of emergency room RPG games on the market.

Trauma Center New Blood receives major kudos for having left all the 3-D crap on other games out of this one. The screen display works well; however, it would be much better if it were easier to change from one instrument to another. For example, when attempting to obtain the suction device, often the laser device is selected and when attempting to take the forceps, the game instead will choose the antibiotic gel. Again, a few tweaks and it would be the ultimate of RPG hospital games.

If anyone playing Trauma Center New Blood agrees, please join me in contacting the designer of this game, Altus at http://www.altus.com to ask for an update patch to make the game a bit easier to play without the unnecessary discussion acknowledgments from the nursing staff and find some manner to keep the cursor/playing dot within the screen view versus somewhere out in thin air where nobody can find it.

Overall, this is a wonderful game with some educational value. The Unrated and/or Teen rating (the website gives no rating yet while the game itself has a rating of Teen) needs some updating or at least close scrutiny by parents when considering the game for children younger than teenage. If the child can handle the maturity of the video and the processes taking place, there is no reason for them not to have the chance to play the game. Again, it could be the one game that plants the seed for the child to consider medicine as a future goal in life. There is nothing greater in this world than helping others especially when these "others" are sick for whatever reason.

There is nothing better than knowing a person helped save the life of another. I am not a doctor but I have had the occasional chance to be in the right place at the right time to help when a person became ill and required emergent care. I was able to stabilize the patient until the appropriate personnel arrived to take over. I literally saved my own father's life once when he had a massive heart attack in my living room. Despite our differences due to his alcoholism, I will never regret saving his life that night until I was able to get him to the emergency room where they air-lifted him to a trauma center better equipped to handle his damaged heart. I encourage everyone to take CPR classes. It can literally save your life or the life of someone you know and/or love one day.