Trauma Center: Under the Knife (Nintendo DS)

Assuming the role of Derek Stiles, a rookie surgeon, your task in Trauma Center is to save the world. Blessed with a unique gift only known as the "healing touch", which gives you extraordinary speed and concentration when performing a surgery, you'll take on a group of terrorists who've brought upon a mysterious, yet life-threatening virus called GUILT upon the world.

Of course, as a surgeon, you won't have to take on these people head on, Street Fighter-style. Instead, each attack from the terrorists is sent to you in the form of a patient. The injured parts are revealed as close-ups on the touch screen, while you use a host of items to salvage the situation within a time limit. Obviously, the cases get more and more complicated as the game progresses, and saving the lives of these patients becomes truly a race against time, as well as the strange ailments that befall upon them.

In essence, Trauma Center requires you to perform surgeries after surgeries. While this may sound a little repetitive, you probably won't even notice it in practice. The game is paced so quickly, you'd barely have any time to think about what to do next, and before you know it, you're on the job again. Sharp instincts, quick reflexes and a lot of patience are what will get you through the game. But if you're into unveiling the mystery behind GUILT and its perpetuator, you wouldn't be shortchanged too. The game did a good job of making a simple story interesting, and despite some insanely difficult to perform surgeries (and many lost lives), you'll get great satisfaction out of every soul you save.

Saving lives is not exactly rocket science in Trauma Center. It basically involves selecting an item from the icons on the sides of the touch screen, and applying them to the wounded areas. For example, you can suture a wound by stroking your stylus in a zigzag fashion over a cut, or remove a foreign object from the bodies by lifting it in the correct direction by holding it and slowly dragging it away with the stylus. Your assistant will also give you instructions on the top screen on what to do, so you ought to have some ideas on how to make things work like a real surgeon, even though you may never emulate the handwriting. However, as the action gets thicker and faster, you may simply find the advice being a bother rather than help.

And then they give you some cases when no one else is around to advise you.

Such is the pressure of Trauma Center, I'd only recommend it to gamers who have a strong heart (no pun intended). If you're not into looking at wounds and lacerations, the game won't shock you by the quite unrealistic graphics (for the bodies and blood and what have you - the nurses, I mean, people, are generally well drawn ). But it does have the potential of making you want to throw your DS towards the wall when you fail to save yet another a life, and that's when the real problem comes in. The game is very difficult to play, and as I mentioned, you'll need a lot of patience to engage it. But at least it tries to help you concentrate on the task by toning down the audios, which may not be a plus point for some, but definitely one for me.

And, if after all that I wrote, you still think you've what it takes to seek the truth behind GUILT, you should immediately turn off that episode of ER, and make an appointment with Trauma Center: Under the Knife.