This past week, Trauma Team came out for the Wii. For those unaware, it's the latest in the Trauma Center series for the Wii and the DS, a medical drama where the player's job is to perform complicated surgeries. Trauma Team deviates from the standard Trauma Center mechanics by allowing you to play as one of several different characters, each performing different types of surgery, as well as patient diagnostics and forensics.
Of course, the point of this post isn't to review the game or give a recommendation (simply put, how interested you are in an anime medical drama tells you whether or not this game is for you). However, as far as sequel design goes, Trauma Team both stumbles, as well as keeps the series fresh. I'd hesitate to call it the best in the series, but at the same time, it's the most interesting and engaging.
See, as fun as Trauma Center is, one of its largest problems is repetition. There's only so much you can do with a limited toolset and a sick body. As a result, the players end up fighting regenerating superviruses and defusing bombs in order to keep the gameplay varied. And I highly doubt doctors rush in and do surgery on multiple patients in the streets in the scene of an outbreak. One of the goals of Trauma Team was to keep the gameplay varied while shying away from the silly science-fiction storyline. By giving the player viewpoints of multiple doctors and an intersecting storyline, the player may choose whatever gameplay style suits them at the moment.
Of course, this leads to problems. With gameplay spread out so much, it never feels like the individual episodes are giving enough time to be built to a satisfying conclusion. Plot points are introduced and resolved fairly quickly, and I never got to get to know the doctors as much as I would have liked. The final, overall episode also frequently forced me to play the gameplay styles I enjoyed the least.
Part of it is that one of the episodes simply felt out of place. All the doctors involved with surgery, first aid, endoscopy, and orthopedics had familiar but separate gameplay styles that worked well as a whole. Additionally, there are two non-action, but text-driven episodes; diagnostics and forensics. The diagnostics doctor (who looks like Spike from Cowboy Bebop) is charged with figuring out what's wrong with his patients so that someone else can ultimately take care of it. While this is a huge departure from the various surgeries, we still see him regularly interact with the rest of the cast. Diagnostics is also fairly straightforward but oddly addicting. Forensics, however, feels like a poor Ace Attorney clone (and adventure games in general). Naomi, the specialist in this episode, doesn't have any interaction with the main cast until near the end. Additionally, her role is less about medicine and more a detective. Also, while this may sound like an odd complaint, her episode tries to take itself seriously, which is a huge shift in tone from the rest of the game. Other episodes include a jailed surgeon with a 250-year sentence, a superhero, ninjas, and a blatant fanservice shot with first response expert Maria Torres. To try to tug our heartstrings with a half-baked murder mystery just feels weird.
While each episode certainly has its individual problems, none of them are really dealbreakers, and ultimately the variety is what makes Trauma Team so strong. Granted, as a Trauma Center veteran, the game felt far on the easy side, but hopefully a dive into the harder difficulty will ease that feeling (though I'll go ahead and scold the developers for the ridiculously anticlimactic final boss). And put some dang money into the cutscene budget; one shot looked like cardboard cut-outs falling on each other.
Trauma Team makes a strong effort to be a good sequel; it mixes things up, trying to bring in newer fans without alienating the old ones. However, comparing it to another recent sequel, Super Mario Galaxy 2, I feel that Trauma Team stands out. While SMG2 is easily a better game, it also does little that the first Mario Galaxy did not. Adding Yoshi and upping the difficulty aren't enough to make a good sequel, and as a result, Super Mario Galaxy 2 feels more like an expansion pack. Trauma Team decided to go in a different direction while still maintaining the feel of the series, and as a result, created a much more memorable product.
