First things first:
This is a game where a diagnostician who looks like Spike Spiegel jumps off a roof to escape the FBI, lands on a waiting helicopter, and then does a finger gun. This is far from the oddest thing that happens, it was just the one I got around to ripping the graphics of back in 2010.
Now that we've got that out of the way, let's talk about the rest of Trauma Team.
I'll preface this by saying I'm an unabashed fan of the Trauma series; I S-ranked all of Under the Knife, and New Blood was the main reason I got a Wii. The series' gameplay never got all that tiring for me (except for Under the Knife 2, but that mostly recycled New Blood missions), and I still think it's a fantastic example of arcade-style, bite-size gameplay. Tough as nails, too.
Trauma Team was totally different (see EmCeeGrammar's sadpreciation thread for details), but it worked perfectly for me. The new styles of operation gave the core gameplay a needed freshening up, and the 'adventure' portions were an interesting change of pace.
I hadn't really played Trauma Team since late 2010, though. I went on a mad kick for it when it first came out, then I replayed it in parts with a bunch of friends at my dorm that year, but I never bothered to give it a full replay after that. So I've been working my way through the game again these past few weeks. I'm most of the way done with the six separate campaigns, with the final one still to go.
It occurs to me I don't have a really good way to organize my thoughts, so I'll be weak and resort to the bullet list:
At the end of the day though this is just making me wish for the sequel that will never come now, though. I had hopes that the Wii U gamepad would convince someone in Atlus to greenlight a new entry just because of the hardware possibilities, but no way it's happening now, not with Trauma Team's sales, Atlus' current situation, and the Wii U's lack of momentum.
This is a game where a diagnostician who looks like Spike Spiegel jumps off a roof to escape the FBI, lands on a waiting helicopter, and then does a finger gun. This is far from the oddest thing that happens, it was just the one I got around to ripping the graphics of back in 2010.
Now that we've got that out of the way, let's talk about the rest of Trauma Team.
I'll preface this by saying I'm an unabashed fan of the Trauma series; I S-ranked all of Under the Knife, and New Blood was the main reason I got a Wii. The series' gameplay never got all that tiring for me (except for Under the Knife 2, but that mostly recycled New Blood missions), and I still think it's a fantastic example of arcade-style, bite-size gameplay. Tough as nails, too.
Trauma Team was totally different (see EmCeeGrammar's sadpreciation thread for details), but it worked perfectly for me. The new styles of operation gave the core gameplay a needed freshening up, and the 'adventure' portions were an interesting change of pace.
I hadn't really played Trauma Team since late 2010, though. I went on a mad kick for it when it first came out, then I replayed it in parts with a bunch of friends at my dorm that year, but I never bothered to give it a full replay after that. So I've been working my way through the game again these past few weeks. I'm most of the way done with the six separate campaigns, with the final one still to go.
It occurs to me I don't have a really good way to organize my thoughts, so I'll be weak and resort to the bullet list:
- The story is even more melodramatic and crazy than I remembered. Hank's story in particular will never fail to make me laugh. This isn't a bad thing, though! I actually started replaying New Blood instead of this and it was just so much dryer. I think the move to this sort of over-the-top storytelling was the right one for the series, which always took itself a bit too seriously.
- I still love the way chapters in the game are laid out. Left-to-right gives different campaigns, top-to-bottom gives chronology. Makes it possible to either power through a single story or to play it as one huge, constantly-POV-switching campaign (which I prefer).
- Building off of that, it's just fun to have a game with six protagonists who each get their own chances to shine while still showing up in others' campaigns.
- That said, some of the campaigns are as inconsequential as I'd remembered. Like, does Hank ever do anything important? Ever? I guess he
in CR-S01's story, but that's about it. Tomoe at leastgrabs some electrical wiresnear the end.gets the first succesful treatment of Rosalia
- I'm a fan of their version of acheivements - "Doctor Medals" of dfferent ranks that you get for doing all sorts of extra stuff. Diagnosis is probably the most fun, since the ones there are designed around finding abnormalities that don't actually relate to the patient's disease.
- Love the soundtrack, though the porno-sax of Gabe's diagnosis music cracks me up, especially considering that's probably the most fanservicey part of the game.
- The voice acting is surprisingly strong all around, except Hank (who might be sounding ridiculous on purpose) and a few of the secondary characters.
- Orthopedics is still my least favorite discipline, but that's probably because I've got naturally shaky hands. Goddamned synthetic bone cutouts.
- Forensics is fucked up. It's so fucked up. I'd forgotten just how fucked up it got. Case two
that's so fucked up. Case threegirl gets a disease, abuses her parents, winds up locked in her room, then vomits blood and crawls to the door, scratching at it until her nails break off and she diesthat's so fucked up.an old lady gets a brain tumor, goes insane, hears voices, thinks God's telling her to kill her family, chases her daughter down dressed like a monster, stabs her, carves a sigil into her, thinks she did it wrong and tries again with her husband who winds up killing her in self-defense
At the end of the day though this is just making me wish for the sequel that will never come now, though. I had hopes that the Wii U gamepad would convince someone in Atlus to greenlight a new entry just because of the hardware possibilities, but no way it's happening now, not with Trauma Team's sales, Atlus' current situation, and the Wii U's lack of momentum.
