Trauma Team
Medical miracle.
Forensics, meanwhile, often feels like a totally different game, one which could easily become a new spin-off of its own. Trauma Center fans may remember Naomi Kimishima from the Z missions in Second Opinion, but even if not, she's one of the game's most interesting characters. She also represents one of its rare sojourns into fantasy territory, her phone able to relay the last words of the corpse currently lying on her table - through the remote's speaker, naturally. It's a creepy and effective device to hook you in as you piece together the mysterious circumstances surrounding the death.
Again, there's plenty of to-ing and fro-ing here, as Naomi hops between her computer, the evidence room and the scene of the crime, gathering information and utilising FBI pal 'Little Guy' to analyse evidence and ultimately solve "the mystery of how life's flame was extinguished", in Naomi's slightly melodramatic terms. There's definitely something of Phoenix Wright in how this all works, combined with the evidence-linking of the recent Ace Attorney Investigations, and Another Code's multiple-choice questions which check you've been paying attention.
Despite the appearance of a maniacal bomber, and a dose of gallows humour (Naomi is referred to as The Corpse Whisperer) it's also quite po-faced in comparison to the other disciplines - most notably in one particularly troubling early case which offers a genuinely dark and disturbing conclusion. Elsewhere, there are mad bombers, helicopter chases and pretend superheroes, and the series staple that is the suicidal girl who eventually realises she just wants to live, dammit, but a couple of cases definitely enter darker territory than we've seen before.
While every doctor has his and her own story, the plot threads weave together, so as CR-S01 you may get to operate on a patient Maria has just put into an ambulance, or to perform an endoscopy on a patient you recently diagnosed. As you can switch between characters whenever you fancy, this can occasionally lead to mishaps, such as knowing a patient's condition before you've examined him, but then you still need to analyse his symptoms to arrive at the obvious conclusion. There's also a final case which involves every character, and which only unlocks when you've completed all previous procedures, which should take a good 20 hours. Factor in the co-op modes and additional Specialist difficulty and you've got a game that will take you a fair old while to finish.
It's rare to see a third-party Wii game that's quite so polished, with terrific comic-book story sequences (all voiced, and effectively at that) and some superb interface design that has the fingerprints of the Persona series' Masayoshi Sutou all over it. More importantly, the controls - Endoscopy quibbles aside - are among the most efficient, responsive and well-calibrated of any Wii game, while there's an admirable variety in the operations, even within each individual section. And thankfully you can skip the pre-op chat any time you want to replay a mission for a better score.
With a super-easy Intern difficulty, the accessibility of the controls and the brilliance of the presentation, there's probably no better time for newcomers to jump in. And though the truth remains that the Wii remote is no substitute for a touchscreen and stylus when it comes to slicing and suturing, even series veterans will likely agree that this is as good as the Trauma series is likely to get.
Trauma Team is out now in North America. There are no currently no plans for a European release.