Trauma Center: Under the Knife was probably one of the most talked about Nintendo DS games when it came out. Not since Imagic’s Microsurgeon for the Intellivision has there been such an interesting game that makes medical operations exciting. Atlus announced early on that Trauma Center: Second Opinion was going to be one of the first games released for the Wii. Not having played the original DS game, I was excited to try the game out.

At first I was a little nervous, I figured when I heard it was a simulation game that it was going to be extremely difficult – say the level of an old Avalon Hill board game. Thankfully, that was not the case at all, because on the easy and normal levels, you are guided through the game very nicely by a nurse.

When you fire up the game, you are treated to an ER-like theme song with in game action. Some of the text is just too funny, like “turn your living room into an O.R”…especially with the whole soap opera aspect of the game.

For those new to the series like me, initially you take the role of Dr. Derek Stiles, an up and coming doctor who needs to learn the ropes. Although he’s not fully mature, there are very hot nurses to help him out and show more cleavage than any nurse I’ve ever run into.

As Dr. Derek, you must operate on many patients in order to save their lives. At first you’ll get rather simple assignments such as stitching up a wound and then you’ll progress into more labor intensive operations such as removing tumors from someone. The year is 2018 and fortunately medical technology has some a long ways since today. For example there’s a new antibiotic gel that pretty much heals everything. There are also magic bandages that promote healing. Of course, some of the technology is old school; you’ll still have access to an ultrasound, scalpel, and forceps among other traditional medical items.

Controls aren’t as difficult as you would think they’d be. You use the nunchuck controller as an item selector—each direction on the controller corresponds to a different medical item. You use the Wiimote as the pointer while in the body and use the action buttons to perform an action. Jump starting a heart never felt so good as you control a defibrillator in the game. By pushing the wii-mote and nunchuck forward and hitting the buttons at just the right moment you can shock the patient back into life. All that’s missing is the ability to yell “clear”.

There are three difficulty levels in the game – easy is, well…very easy. Normal is a good challenge and hard is very difficult. The manual says it’s almost as hard as a real operation, but somehow I doubt that.

The in-game action is very enjoyable and there are plenty of different missions/operations to complete. Usually the game works in a tutorial fashion – first you’ll play a level with the nurse coddling you on how to do things. Once you complete it, you’ll then have to do it on your own with the nurse giving you less direction. After the level you are graded and earn points. Some of the action is rather silly. For example in the “remove the shards of glass from the patient” level, you need to use forceps in order to pull the glass out. You do this by pressing the A and B buttons on the Wiimote. You then have to put the glass on a dish. If you miss putting the shard of glass on the dish, magically the glass goes back into the patient’s body, which is rather silly for such a simulation.