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March 11, 2024

Trauma Center: Second Opinion (Part 2)


Strain of the Week

I wondered where the names of the GUILTs
came from. Turns out, it's just the days of the
week in Greek. Kyriaki = Sunday,
Deftera = Monday, etc.

When we left off, Derek learned that his mentor, Greg Kasal from Hope Hospital, has been infected by a strain of GUILT, those new super-diseases created by medical terrorist group Delphi.

...Yeah, I just wrote that. What, were you expecting a video game about a surgeon to be normal? We already jumped the shark, it’s all downhill from here.

Dr. Greg is a far cry from the happy man we had
as our mentor. It is only fitting that he
becomes our final exam as a student...

Although the true form of Tetarti is shown in the
picture above, we actively participated to a
testing/research period beforehand, helping
make a cure for the strain.
Since the strain is new, the team at Caduceus doesn’t have a treatment for it. A serum is in the works, but they need more antigen. Several other weaker cases of the new strain, known as Tetarti, have popped up around town. Each one of them seems to be a slightly different virus, so we go around town operating on the people bearing these weaker strains and obtain no less three antigen variants. Victor, ever the smiler, finishes the serum, and then we operate on Dr. Kasal to remove the GUILT. This one comes as three creatures that move around the organ; one green, one yellow and one purple. You must inject each with the serum of its corresponding color, and you must do that before all three disappear at the same time. Their colors also go away after a bit, forcing you to remember which is which (or watch their trails of colored gas to figure it out).

Victor never cracks a damn smile, but he gets
shit done. That's all Caduceus asks for.
Kasal is saved, but this is only the beginning of trouble. Secretary of Health and Human Services Richard Anderson, who doubles as head of Caduceus, is giving a speech downtown when he suffers a cardiac arrest. Hospitalized, it's revealed to actually be another unknown variant of GUILT. Christ, there’s gonna be a hundred of those things by the end. Diseases: Gotta Catch ‘Em All! Since Caduceus does not have the cure for that one, Mr. Anderson courageously says he’ll be their guinea pig so they can study this new disease and counter it. Our first operation on the man is a series of experimentations with the aid of Victor; we don’t cure the secretary, but we have data and samples to work from.

There's the cuts, too. And the little things
this damn disease keeps spawning, as well.
Victor puts Derek through some tests to work on a cure for Pempti, the new disease. This leads to a new liquid, with limited efficacy; it only reveals the core of the virus, another little monster to kill, which the current solution can’t do. More experimentations follow until we have something that can beat Pempti. We operate on the secretary again and kill the disease, but the repeated surgeries have weakened him too much to survive. Before dying, he meets with Robert Hoffman, the director of Hope Hospital, and begs him to take over as head of Caduceus and to go back to performing surgeries. Hoffman had left the practice to focus on managerial duties following catastrophes caused by the use of his own Healing Touch. Hoffman agrees, determined to put an end to Delphi.

Good to see him come back to the practice.

Fighting Delphi

Chapter 5 starts intensely, with a GUILT outbreak reported on the Citywalk. The Caduceus team, Hoffman at the head, goes there to operate on new patients. Everyone knows how to fight the strains, and we get to it quick, operating on five people infected with the Kyriari strain over a 10-minute time limit.

*incoherent yelling*
Then, we must cure someone from Triti (which I still friggin’ hate) outside of the quarantine perimeter. This one never changes; thorns, triangles, gas to drain, multiplication, easy to screw up. And right after that, we must operate the Tetarti strain out of someone. Yeah, the one with the three colors. For fighting the outbreak and doing the right thing even as the FDA and other politicians wanted to stop them (as the treatments had to be shipped to various hospitals despite not being approved), the doctors of Caduceus end up beating the diseases and get hailed as heroes.

A few days later, Caduceus is infiltrated by intruders. Derek and Angie find Cybil chasing a mysterious man (whom we later learn is both a major member of Delphi AND Angie’s father – yikes). She couldn't catch him, but he did manage to infect her with a GUILT, forcing us to operate on our colleague.

The worm splits, and splits, and splits some more.
Oh, and lacerates every time, too.
Sure enough, it’s another new strain. Christ, how many of those are there? This one, called Paraskevi, looks like a multi-segmented worm. You stop it from moving using the laser on its tail, then cut with the scalpel. It will split in two, also causing a laceration, and you must repeat with the smaller ones. Asteroids: The Surgery Game. The final worms, with only one segment, can then be pulled out with the forceps. The trap is that the worms will eventually shake and dig into the organ, fleeing to another, with their goal being to enter the patient’s heart, killing them. The trick is to never split the worm into more than you can handle and keep an eye for their tails shaking.

Angie’s father, Dr. Kenneth Blackwell, is now being watched by the FBI at Eidoth, the pharmaceuticals company where he worked. That company is about to be raided, but in case another outbreak occurs in retaliation, Derek and Angie are also sent there, despite Angie’s connection with the disgraced doctor. The next day, they depart, and at Eidoth’s offices, they find an employee suffering from yet another new strain. Geez!

I don't mention it anywhere else, so here goes: The reason
Blackwell works for Delphi is that Angie was kidnapped by
them as a child and her father gave himself to them in
order to let her go free. So he's a more tragic figure, not
a mustache-twirling "we're happy that people die" fella like
the others. In short: Fuck Delphi with a rusty knife.

We cure the employee, who is affected by a weaker version. Whenever wounds open, little blue bug-like things come out. If many converge, they combine into a bigger one that causes a nasty drop in the patient’s vitals. You laser those to kill them. Think that’s bad enough? You haven’t seen shit. Blackwell is infected with the full form of the seventh and final strain, Savato. Like everyone else, he is anesthetized and operated.

God damn, I hate that thing. It's gonna be the
final boss, I can already tell.
Savato takes a while to defeat. We must cut the spider web it creates around the organ, but there are two catches; first, breaking a strand instantly destroys the scalpel (and you must wait a few seconds to get another one), and second, it will create a new web strand at each 2-3 you manage to cut, spawning the little blue bugs. You saved this organ? It moves to another, and you repeat the process three times total. Only after this can you fight the Savato; it will open lacerations, summoning more bugs. Kill the bugs, zap Savato with the laser, then when all its protective layers are gone, cut it with the scalpel. This must also be done three times. Savato can suck the bugs into itself to regain strength; if it does that, you’re screwed, start the operation over.

I'd like to, but the little shit won't stop moving!

Yikes, that's a lot of cuts. Good thing we just
found out how to STOP TIME!
After which, it launches a desperation attack. It causes lacerations at a high speed and will avoid your attempts at injecting the serum (handed by Victor just in time) that will kill it. Even when time is slowed, it’s too fast. However, Derek's Healing Touch will activate on its own. Activate it again while time is slowed, and time will stop completely, letting us kill that bastard Savato. Meaning that you cannot use the Touch at all up until that point of the operation. Christ!

After his recovery, a repentant Blackwell will answer for his crimes, but for now, Angie is just happy her father is fine. As usual, the Chapter's end unlocks an operation in which we control Nozomi Weaver. She works on an experiment taking place shortly before the raid, in which the strain of Kyriaki is combined with the blue bugs from Savato. You’re instructed to keep at least one bug alive so it can be studied and captured while you treat the Kyriaki.

Caduceus Europe

Following the assault on Eidoth, international organizations cracked down on Delphi sleeper cells, eliminating most of the medical terrorist organization. The shit they got up to was horrifying, like keeping children as incubators of GUILT strains. What the actual fuck. During a raid, the British Navy was able to put an end to this (with Derek and Angie on standby), and even capture Adam, the leader of the organization, an elderly man infected with all the strains, and still spouting his bullshit about humanity needing to die.

Yeah. Tired. Oh, and shaky, as well.
This game is surprisingly stressful.

For "an honor", he doesn't seem too pleased.
Several months later, Derek and Angie are given a long-term assignment at Caduceus Europe, in Great Britain. Doctor Hoffman comes along. The three reunite with Langston Miller, head of Caduceus Europe, met during the mission in Africa. We also meet Research Executive Dr. Owen, whose tie covered in skulls feels out of place at a medical facility. Dude looks like Ledger’s Joker without makeup, even though this game came out before The Dark Knight.

Owen is working on regenerative cells, and says he'll save a lot of patients thanks to them, but he remains secretive as he'll discuss them at the upcoming convention held at Caduceus Europe. We also meet Naomi Kimishima, who is actually Dr. Weaver, who feels guilty having helped Delphi this whole time and chose to atone by putting her skills to the service of this branch.

Our first operation here involves curing someone from the Tetarti strain. After curing this patient, Derek falls over, having been infected. This time, it’s Dr. Kimishima who will operate on him, with Angie still assisting. Not just one strain, but two at once: Kyriaki and Paraskevi. Yikes. We’re approaching the end of the game, so the operations are getting tough, but this one’s still manageable. Saved by Naomi, Derek is left to rest and come back from this intense experience.

The lacerations here were done by the Kyriaki,
hidden within the organ. The Let's Play I use
for these screenshots dealt with the
Paraskevi worms first.

The International Conference

Is there anything human left in that body? I swear,
this is the most anime crap I've ever seen.

After he has recovered, Derek is taken into the laboratories of Caduceus Europe and is shown a horrible truth: The place keeps Adam’s body to study (and possibly cure) it. He’s in stasis, and rotten to the core, but conscious. Like he’s so diseased he just won’t die. You know, the Mr. Burns meme?


Blood. Blood everywhere. This looks like the
aftermath of a Finisher from Mortal Kombat.
...Yeah, that. Miller admits the project of regenerative cells is based on research made on Adam’s body, from an illness responsible for keeping him alive. We cut forward to the conference held at Caduceus Europe, where Dr. Owen explains his new treatment, even bringing a patient on stage to demonstrate. Although Drs. Hoffman and Kimishima are impressed by the results, they question the methods taken to get them and don’t trust this new cure, calling it an eighth GUILT and likely to backfire. Turns out they’re right – mere seconds later, several guests at the conference start coughing and bleeding. The new “cure” is a strain that’s gone airborne and spread various forms of GUILT all over the place. Since's he just been cured of one and has recovered, Derek is now safe, and can therefore operate on the infected attendees.

We cure the patient from the presentation, who had the Pempti version, after which it’s revealed Dr. Owen was a Delphi implant who always planned to use his work on Adam’s body to infect the whole damn conference and destroy modern medicine in one massive event. What? No way! He looked like such a friendly, trustworthy, non-Joker-like fellow!

Ohhh, the visual novel is all still images, but
he's got a twitchy eye, I'm betting on it!

Oof, I don't think this patient is gonna
survive the Deftera.
Since there’s upwards of 25 attendees infected, Derek and Naomi are put to work. In this penultimate mission, they’ll alternate as they work on four patients over 10 minutes, with all four having different strains. This means that you have access to both surgeons’ Healing Touches, but only for the operation they’re in, and only once through this mission, so choose wisely when to activate it. You can’t even swap the order in which you use the surgeons, ‘cause that’d be too easy. You know it’s gonna be fun when the first is the goddamn Triti, the most annoying of them all, with Derek; then Naomi deals with Kyriaki; then Derek cures someone from Deftera; and finally, Naomi again with Paraskevi, this time a worm even longer than the previous times we saw this strain. Oh, and no checkpoints.

This is the point where ProZD and Jay rage-quit.
So close to the end, yet so far. Then again, I
totally get it, I almost gave up as well.
It’s insanely tough even on Easy – you can only afford an average of 2 and a half minutes for each, so you can’t make any mistakes. You need to have mastered the fight against every strain, be efficient, and know when to use each Touch. I tried this mission several times and kept failing at specific points (either starting over when losing control of Triti, or failing to catch the Paraskevi before they burrowed into the heart, which is an instant loss). I put down the game, then tried again two weeks later, and succeeded on my second try then, probably because I had no patience left and played very carefully, with help from guides. By the end, my hands were shaking worse than Doctor Strange’s after his car accident. I had to take breaks between operations, this was so stressful.

This time, both Derek and Naomi help each other
against Savato, even providing both Healing
Touches.
Crisis averted? Not entirely. While we were dealing with all this, Dr. Hoffman, who sought a serum to quickly cure everyone, contracted the nastiest version of the Savato strain. Derek and Naomi team up to operate on Hoffman, using both their Touches when necessary to beat the damn virus (including Derek’s time-stopping one), and eventually manage to defeat this thing and rescue the director of Caduceus USA. Owen is arrested, and this time, Delphi is destroyed, for good. Roll credits.

The end, right? Yes... and no. Following this, we unlock a set of new bonus missions on Extreme difficulty. In these, we operate every single GUILT strain out of the body of Adam himself, one at a time. Each mission opens for both doctors, so if you feel like finishing this final challenge, you need to beat every Extreme mission with Derek and with Naomi separately. After the Hell that the last story missions were, I tried curing Kyriaki once, failed miserably, and said “fuck it”. I ain’t doing those.

HEY ADAM HOW ABOUT YOU SHUT THE FUCK UP
ABOUT YOUR DEATH CULT RAMBLINGS AND LET ME
CURE YOUR UNGRATEFUL BASTARD ASS - sorry,
I really, really, really hate this dude and his beliefs.

Final words

One of the most stressful games I’ve ever played, Trauma Center: Second Opinion is one Hell of an experience. Interesting gameplay with a lot of tricky moments, all backed by a story that starts out tame but eventually becomes utterly ridiculous. I don’t want to dismiss anime as silly stuff, but I swear the plot here soon enough goes down the road of classic "anime" clichés and dutifully checks them one by one as though challenging itself to feature them all.

The screen takes on a blue tint when a doctor's
Healing Touch appears.
Characters have a magical ability that fits their field of expertise? Check. Villains are hilariously over-the-top? Check. The stakes keep getting bigger? Check. One character is connected by family to a major villain? Check. And, of course, when the final challenge appears, the generic protagonist either discovers a new ability or supercharges their known ability to overcome it. I don’t know if I’m jaded or cynical about this, or if I’ve seen this type of story too much, but it really felt like a storm of clichés – which isn’t necessarily a bad thing when doing it for humor. Unfortunately, the “medical drama” part of the story takes itself seriously enough to cause an intense clash with the sillier events. This creates a tonal dichotomy where the pieces are forced together and struggle to fit.

This is one of the early-game missions.
I’ve got nothing bad to say about the medical drama though! That part’s fine. From Derek needing to have his responsibility as doctor drilled into him early on, to the characters attending various conventions, and operations using proper jargon wherever applicable – that’s all great. It’s when we get to the semi-immortal dude who spouts crap about having to stop modern medicine so humanity will die faster, surrounding himself with similarly villainous guys, spreading diseases literally made of monster insects we squash with our tools, that I feel a neck-breaking whiplash. (And the sequels literally have Naomi Kimishima talk to the dead; nothing to help my comparison to Ace Attorney...)

Speaking of – gameplay! I do appreciate that Trauma Center has in-depth gameplay featuring several aspects of operations. Gel the area, cut open, do what you must do, suture, re-gel, apply bandage. “Do what you must do” varies wildly depending on the disease we’re fighting. In some cases, you need to remember the steps and do them in the right order. Some tools will be used more often than others, but the game tries to justify having them all on hand – as an example, the ultrasound occasionally finds use, but after a point, we only use it against Kyriaki. I wished there had also been more reasons to use the defibrillator, which very rarely comes up.

The bomb was one of the first noteworthy
roadblocks on my way to beating this game.
An issue in the switch from Nintendo DS to Wii is that it’s much harder being precise when pointing a remote at a television compared to tapping a stylus at a touch screen, and thus it’s easier to miss a target or hit the wrong thing. Changing tools with the Nunchuk’s analog stick can be tricky since each tool is in one of the eight directions, and it’s easy for the game to register the incorrect one. Considering you often need to act in a matter of seconds... On the plus side, failure is a slap on the wrist, you get a sad monologue about feeling inadequate as a surgeon, then you can restart. It’s only an issue with the longer missions, near endgame in particular. All missions are available in three difficulties, with the most notable differences being that, the easier the difficulty, the more slowly a patient’s vitals drop, and the faster the stabilizer raises those vitals. There are more specifics, depending on the operation. With that said, even on Easy, this game can be pretty friggin' hard, which shouldn't be surprising considering it was developed by Atlus, a studio with a reputation for difficult games; but it's also set apart by its rough learning curve, and even mundane operations can throw unexpected curveballs if you're not careful or prepared.

There could have been plenty of challenges to be
found in "normal", "mundane" operations. But
instead, we get weird diseases, over and over.
We do get more peculiar operations when playing as Naomi/Nozomi prior to Chapter 6, with new gameplay elements we don’t have anywhere else. Those missions are great. However, once the fight with Delphi takes over the plot, normal operations with regular diseases are basically dropped; from then on, it’s almost always GUILT, cutting into the originality of the missions by having one of the seven strains. It’s a shame, because I would have loved to have more operations of various types. We operate on a heart; on a bomb (yeah, I hated that level, but at least it was creative!); on a patient on a plane, with intermittent turbulences... We even transplant a kidney as Naomi! I wished we had gotten more of those.

That covers it all. If you’ve still got a Wii and feel like checking this game, which as I mentioned, was a launch title for the console... by all means, go for it. The Trauma Center franchise is an oddity of the late ‘00s, almost forgotten to all, which is a shame because it’s a clever idea for a game and it would be very interesting to see what could be done with this idea nowadays.

See you soon for something else.

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