They have their roots in games with fresh, focused narratives with living, breathing open worlds and with systems of meaningful player input. These games define the medium today and are shaping the medium for tomorrow, and none of them have their roots in Japanese cliches or in completely sequestering story from gameplay. Hell, as much as I hate to admit it, that state is Mass Effect 2. Ultimately, I have to look at the state of video games today, and that state is Heavy Rain. And while I have changed a lot in the last five years, I don't think those changes really had much to do with video games. Those games should have told me not to like Trauma Center, those bastards, but they didn't, so I can only conclude that, at the time, Trauma Center did genuinely have a place among their ranks. If that were true, then I wouldn't have liked Trauma Center in the first place, because I can point to at least a dozen better games right from where I'm sitting that preceded Trauma Center in release. Now, its fourth numbered entry is a landmark in video game design.Īll of these one-eighties are not merely the product of me playing better games with greater frequency in the latter half of the last decade.
#TRAUMA CENTER SECOND OPINION LIVE SKIT SERIES#
Then there's God of War, a game I absolutely despised in 2005 for its brevity, weak dialogue, and poor characterization, but upon replaying it in late 2009, it stunned me with its haunting take on Greek mythology and its very focused portrayal of Kratos as an individual so far gone down the path of violent abandon he can hardly be called a man anymore.Īnd there's Grand Theft Auto, a series I couldn't be arsed to consider playing five years ago. But I can't help but think if I'd played Eternal Sonata right when I bought it, apart from actually getting my sixty dollars' worth, I would have really enjoyed it. Four hours told me all I needed to know about that experience, particularly that it was going to be woefully repetitive, with a cast of stock JRPG characters: the Magical Girl, the Wiser Older Man, the Brash Young Hero, the Goofy Genius Child. I recently tried to play Eternal Sonata, a game which I regretfully purchased at launch in November 2008 but didn't get around to until January 2011. Now I'm thinking these games just ain't as good.Īnd it doesn't really end there. Now I'm thinking the characters are about as flat, cliched, or retarded as they come (no, seriously, play New Blood as though Valerie Blaylock is mentally challenged and only passed medical school because of her superhuman operating speed it makes it make so much more sense that anyone would put up with her bullshit). At worst, they don't even really work the way they're meant to. Now I'm thinking the controls are pretty damn gimmicky, at best. Now I'm thinking of the few dozen operations in Second Opinion, only about ten of them are actually any different.
#TRAUMA CENTER SECOND OPINION LIVE SKIT FULL#
Furthermore, the stories in these games were chock full of enough intrigue, terrorism, and medical-ethical conflicts to make Lost, 24, and Grey's Anatomy green with envy, respectively, and the characters were all discrete and likable enough to win me over.įast forward almost three years to my second playthrough of Trauma Center in preparation for the recently-released Trauma Team. It turned the control scheme from an imbecilic gimmick to an immersive gem, requiring one to not only keep track of a million things at one time - the patient's vitals, the time remaining, the need to switch between half a dozen medical tools rapidly in the course of a single operation - but also requiring one's hands to reflex at practically inhuman speeds to keep up with it all. Imagine my surprise, then, to find a Wii game that was not only fun to play, but also downright exhilarating. At the time, Trauma Center marked my first outing with the Nintendo Wii, a system I had previously written off as a gimmick. What happened in the interim that could have caused such a marked change? What gives?įirst, let's examine how I felt about the medical simulation series the first time I played it. I just finished replaying both games, and I did not fucking love them anymore. I first played Trauma Center: Second Opinion and Trauma Center: New Blood in May 2008, and I fucking loved them.
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