This is a guest product review by Sarah Leonard of Nursing Degrees. If you want to guest post or review on this blog, check out the guidelines here.
Trauma Team Takes Franchise to the Next Level
Atlus Games has revived its long-running Trauma Center brand with the recent release of the new and improved Trauma Team for the [amazon-product text=”Nintendo Wii” type=”text”]B0009VXBAQ[/amazon-product], which boasts more realistic medical situations while toning down the over-the-top drama that the brand was known for. Although the original game concept took a page from such popular medical shows as ER and Grey’s Anatomy, the new version of the game aims for more realism at the expense of ridiculous soap opera antics.
EMT Gaming
The game features six specialist characters, each with their own game-play mode and storyline. One of the available options is to play as an EMT, “…where every ticking second could mean the difference between life and death.” In the first response mode, players will face extreme accident situations in an environment that depends on quick thinking. As an EMT, you must rely both on the directives of the patients, who yell out their symptoms, and on your own diagnostic knowledge (you will be taught to look for contextual clues). This version of the game also offers up a co-op mode to help you along when you get hung up.
The main goal of this storyline is to patch up patients and send them on to the hospital, but it’s no easy task. With only a handful of tools at your disposal (splints, bandages, etc.) you must stabilize the health of multiple patients who are rapidly losing vitals. If you’re in the midst of bandaging one patient while another goes into cardiac arrest, you must quickly switch over to administer CPR (selection is done with the analog stick while action is controlled with the Wii remote). Other tasks include removing shrapnel and splinting limbs. If all else fails, you can resort to the health boosting “stabilizer” injection to save the day, even if only temporarily. As to what this mystery substance may be, that is apparently a question best left to the medical professionals, but overall, the game-play has a frantic feel meant to mimic the heart-pounding adrenaline rush of an actual medical crisis.
Simulated Patient Assessment
Players interested in the EMT aspect of the game may also benefit from the diagnostic mode, which deals with identifying problems facing patients. At times, you may have to deal with people who are less than willing to participate in their own treatment (the grumpy old man who won’t let you touch him), so you must discover symptoms on your own before the patient will submit to further tests. This could be a useful tool for anyone in the emergency medical response field.
Game-play is supplemented with comic-book style cut scenes that, while aesthetically pleasing, are mainly meant to further the storyline rather than offer additional medical knowledge. However, the game itself is an apt representation of what actual medical professionals may experience, with a little drama thrown in to boost the excitement. For those who seek all the excitement of bandaging bloody accident victims with none of the actual gore, [amazon-product text=”Trauma Team” type=”text”]B002BHSPXO[/amazon-product] may just be the perfect game.
Guest Post by: Sarah Leonard of Nursing Degrees.
