Six doctors. Six specialties.
So I'm playing through Trauma Team right now, and thoroughly enjoying the wacky Japanese hospital drama hijinks. I'm a student in medical school right now, and the game has really surprised me with how good the diagnosis sections are from a medical perspective.
Of course, it's not perfect, but for an Atlus-developed Wii game starring an amnesiac super-surgeon, an orthopedic surgeon who's also a superhero, Dr. Chie, Dr. Yukiko, anime House, and a CSI lady who speaks to the dead, Trauma Team is legitimately on-point about the diseases and the medicine behind them, and doesn't pull any punches with terminology. That said, I haven't finished it yet, and I hear it goes off the rails later. Anyway, here's how the game works.
You start out with the interview:
What brings you in today?
Then you move onto the physical exam:
Soft, non-distended, not tender to palpation w/ normal bowel sounds
Don't forget to listen to heart/lungs/abdomen:
Gurgle gurgle
And move onto reviewing laboratory results:
Anybody who's past first year of medical school should guess this diagnosis just by these numbers.
There are also real X-rays, CTs, MRIs, and more!
An internist who reads his own imaging! Dr. Cunningham is a dying breed.
Check the differential diagnoses the game has picked out, and match up the symptoms:
Sweet, sweet jargon.
Diagnose that shit.
Like being a real doctor, but with more whooshing sound effects.
The actual gameplay boils down to spot-the-differences, and that's to be expected with the layout. But still, it uses real medical terms! Real medical images! Real medical diseases! You get to read EKGs! You look at echocardiograms and scintigraphy! It probably went over most players' heads, but for me, it was totally awesome that Atlus put this much effort into the diagnosis sections of the game.
Any other games that show a similar respect for their real-life source material? Nah, probably not - let's continue gushing about Trauma Team by revisiting EmCeeGamr's excellent sadpreciation thread.
