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Amazon amputates $10 from Trauma Team's price today
Amazon has chosen Atlus's latest medical adventure, Trauma Team, as its Deal of the Day. If you've had difficulty fitting the multidisciplinary -- surgery slash forensics slash endoscopy slash orthopedics slash emergency medicine slash diagnostics (phew!) -- game into your already-strained budget, it should be about ... 25 percent easier today, as the game's marked down from $40 to $30. A review on a certain trusted website suggests that Trauma Team is certainly worth picking up. Did we say "suggests?" More like commands: "If you read reviews to help you with buying decisions, this is an easy one: Buy this game." %Gallery-64456%
Review: Trauma Team
My problem with the Trauma Center games is that they're kind of a one-trick pony. It's a pretty good trick, and not one that other games have emulated, so they've gotten away with it. But I never really thought that pure surgery was enough to carry a whole game; in fact, I often find myself bored long before the end. Trauma Team tackles, nay, demolishes the problem by basically being made up of six smaller, and in some ways, very different games. "You want variety? How's this for variety?!" it seems to snarl, moments before smashing a variety cream pie into your face with faux aggression. So, yeah, I guess what I'm saying is there's a lot of variety. %Gallery-64456%
Share the trauma with Trauma Team's co-op
When you play Trauma Team, you'll have the opportunity to do so as a ... team. A new trailer for the medical adventure game (after the break) demonstrates co-op multiplayer in the Surgery, First Response, Orthopedics, and Endoscopy modes. Most of the multiplayer action involves alternating control of procedures between players, though the Surgery mode makes mention of splitting up surgical tools between players, and First Response's co-op requires players to assign patients from a group to each player. There's a sort of "combo meter" that rewards unbroken chains of successful steps performed by both players. In addition, the inactive player in the Endoscopy mode directs light for the active player. Now you have to determine whether you have any friendships strong enough to stand the test of performing endoscopy together.
Trauma Team to be less traumatic on wallets
Atlus announced the price point for Trauma Team today, and we believe it improves the game's retail prognosis: It's $39.99. That's less than the retail price of most Wii games for a game with six different, interesting modes of play. Trauma Team will be out May 18. To mark the announcement, Atlus sent out a dramatic new trailer for the game. It's oddly conflict-oriented, with lots of talk about "final battles" and "wars" and "fights." Such destructive language for a game about helping sick people! That's no kind of bedside manner.
Trauma Team walks you through Diagnosis
If you're hoping to live out your fantasy of being TV's Dr. Gregory House without the crippling addiction to painkillers and misanthropy, Atlus is here to give you a taste with the last of their Trauma Team previews, this time centering on diagnostician Gabriel Cunningham. Of course, as you already know, the department of diagnostics isn't a real thing. But if you can pretend that an adult plumber with overalls, a bushy mustache and white gloves is not only a permissible human being but also a hero, we figure nothing's out of bounds.
Trauma Team scenario writer on the trauma of writing its scenarios
All the story we need in Trauma Team is "some people get sick, and doctors make them better." But Atlus has generously included a story with the medical action game. In a new featurette on the Atlus site, scenario writer Teppei Kobayashi describes the process of writing for six different medical disciplines, including descriptions of required research, and the fact that the team happened to be working on a medical game when the swine flu epidemic gained notoriety. A couple of videos of story sequences are also included in the featurette. In addition, new screens are available here. %Gallery-86407%
Investigate Trauma Team's forensics missions
A few weeks ago, Atlus demonstrated Trauma Team's forensics segments for us in a webcast. The publisher just released a new trailer focusing on that mode, so you can witness the medical crime-solving gameplay for yourself. It's like Phoenix Wright, but more medical-y, and with more revealing clothes. Of course, it wouldn't be Trauma Center without some odd supernatural elements, and in Trauma Team's forensic missions, space virus monsters give way to phone calls from the dead. If only Dr. Naomi Kimishima had the presence of mind to ask the victims who killed them.
See who made the cut in Trauma Team character contest
This is Charlie Malone, a composer who has worked on Pac-Man World Rally, Pirates of the Burning Sea and more. He won a contest held by Atlus at E3. As a result, he's totally going to die -- unless you can save him. Charlie won Atlus's Trauma Team contest, which awarded him the "prize" of becoming a patient in the upcoming medical game. He submitted pictures to Atlus, and was redrawn to "make the character fit the game while retaining the features from the reference picture," according to art director Masayuki Doi. As a result, it'll seem like you're really patching up this guy's insides. We've also updated our gallery with new images of the game's fictional characters. %Gallery-85055%
Trauma Team delayed; recover from the shock with new trailer
We'll be in the waiting room a bit longer before we're allowed to meet with the Trauma Team. Atlus announced a delay from the game's original April 20 date to May 18. In the meantime, in lieu of an old magazine, why not watch this video about Trauma Team's orthopedics mode? It's all about bones -- setting broken bones, drilling into bones, setting pins, and all manner of extremely methodical work to fix broken Day-Glo bones, all represented in-game as movements within precise guidelines. Even without the Trauma Center time limit or malevolent viruses, it seems stressful.
Impressions: Trauma Team's adventure game-style forensics mode
Trauma Team's forensics, one of the six medical disciplines represented in the Trauma Center sequel, doesn't just involve examining dead bodies for cause of death. The forensic examiner in this game, Trauma Center's Dr. Naomi Kimishima, takes a more holistic, CSI approach to her job, searching crime scenes, interviewing witnesses, and doing all the work of figuring out the events surrounding the victim's death. What that means for us is that Trauma Team contains an adventure game among its six discrete play styles. And, judging by the case we were walked through in an online presentation by Atlus, it looks like an interesting one!
Summon the endoscopy gods in this Trauma Team video
In real life, an endoscopy is when a doctor needs to check out your gutty-works (you know, your innards) using a medical instrument called an endoscope, a long, tube-like device. In the world of Trauma Team, however, to perform an endoscopy you have to summon the power of the "eight million gods that exist to protect this world." You also have to use a bunch of instruments in what appears to be a somewhat complex orchestra conducted by a series of Wiimote and Nunchuk gestures. If there's one thing to take away from this video, it's that the inside of your body is most likely tumor-ridden with tiny little holes everywhere, and you should probably bug your doctor for a check-up. Of course, you could just ask your friend to take a look -- just make sure you sterilize the Wiimote first.
Examine these new Trauma Team screens
Click image for invasive gallery surgery We hope you've got your stethoscope handy, because we have some new Trauma Screens to look over and nary a Doctor Wife™ in sight. There are some cuts to look at, erratic breathing patterns to resolve and even the case of trembly handitis pictured above that needs a cure. So: grab a pen and a clipboard and head into our gallery below to help nurse these wounded screens back to health. %Gallery-83375%
A slice of Trauma Team gameplay
In previous videos for Atlus's upcoming game Trauma Team, we've seen interviews with the voice actors, and behind-the-scenes footage of the recording process and game development. This latest, however, focuses on something that's only been incidental to other trailers: footage of Trauma Team, the game. In this somewhat infomercial-esque video, Atlus introduces the aspect of the game most like its Trauma Center predecessors: the surgical portion. However, unlike the maddening, arcade-style Trauma Center, many of the surgical challenges come without a time limit. Also seen in this video: pretty good 3D models of bones! We just wanted to point that out.
Trauma Team characters detailed by Atlus, a real doctor
Atlus has introduced the full compliment of the six staffers that make up its upcoming Trauma Team. I asked my wife, an actual doctor, to provide me with some insight on each specialty. My take: Playing as this guy sounds like the other Trauma Center games, except I think they all had names and CR-SO1 is not a name. I'm assuming that, as in previous games and in real surgery, he'll be able to draw a magical sign that slows down time. Dr. McElroy's take: There is no magical healing gel and we never make the sign of the pentagram over our patients, especially not in this part of West Virginia.
Meet Trauma Team's voice team
The floodgates for Trauma Team publicity are open, starting with the screenshots and now continuing with promotional videos. Atlus takes us behind the scenes of Trauma Team -- wisely choosing to feature the game's voice recording over, say, the medical research the team did. In the first of two videos (above), Atlus offers a tour of PCB Productions, the company producing the voice work for the multidisciplinary medical adventure. In the second (after the break), we meet a few of the actors portraying the quirky medical team, allowing us to put different faces to the voices behind the cartoon characters. Trauma Team is currently scheduled for an April 20 release date.
Trauma Team screens feature the whole team at work
click to cut open the galleryIn case you've forgotten about Trauma Team (it has been a while), Atlus's expanded Trauma Center sequel stars a group of six medical professionals, each an expert in a different discipline. These new screens feature each of the game's six simulated medical practices in action: surgery, forensics, diagnostics, first response, endoscopy, and orthopedics. They all seem to involve similar activities: jabbing, cutting, and otherwise manipulating human bodies with Wii Remote motions. Still, the variety of methods through which you manipulate said bodies should help keep the Trauma Center formula from going stale, as should the personalities of the six quirky doctors (the "Drama Team," if you will). %Gallery-80773%
Behind the scenes with the Trauma Team team
Trauma Center changed the world a little bit, and we didn't even notice. Sure, there were surgery games before on the PC, but Trauma Center was the first really popular surgery-game franchise. It's so popular, in fact, that not only is there now a game that expands beyond surgery into other medical practices, but we'll watch a behind-the-scenes video for that game raptly.Seriously, this is a game that is partially about endoscopy and we're totally on board. What has Atlus done to us? Trauma Team is currently slated for Spring 2010.
Atlus's Trauma Team will operate on one 'lucky' E3 attendee
Our E3 badges came with a little surprise from Atlus: an insert advertising a contest for Trauma Team. One winner will be in the game! According to the entry form, "Winner will have his or her likeness created for the video game. Video game likeness will be based solely on the digital likeness submitted by the winner."Why, of all the games that we could be in, would it have to be the game in which every character who isn't a doctor is suffering from some, well, trauma. We don't know how we'd feel about being immortalized as "the guy from the appendectomy." So glamorous.
Atlus opens up old wounds with Trauma Team for Wii
Just days before the real life trauma of E3 takes hold, Atlus announced that it will localize the recently revealed Trauma Center successor, Hospital, as Trauma Team for the Wii in North America. As previously noted, the game will feature gameplay across six different medical fields, as players play as a general surgeon, diagnostician, E.M.T., orthopedic surgeon, endoscope technician, and medical examiner. Atlus hasn't yet sewn up all of the details, However, the game is expected to be among the publisher's titles on display during next week's show and we look forward to finding out more before Trauma Team scrubs in next Spring. %Gallery-64456%
