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There are a million ways to dish out death in video games but very few empower players with the gift of healing. Trauma Center: Second Opinion, a Wii reworking of a 2005 Nintendo DS game, gives gamers an opportunity to step into scrubs and save lives rather than take them. There's much new about this pass. Fresh art, new missions and much needed difficulty options help give the recycled story a new lease on life. But it's the  Wii's motion sensing controls that make Trauma Center: Second Opinion worth playing – even if you've already tackled the game with stylus and touchscreen.

A Chance to Cut is A Chance to Cure

If the lightweight mini-games in Rayman: Raving Rabbids and Wii: Sports are great demonstrations of the way the Wii's controls play out in casual games, the precise, intuitive and ultimately demanding scheme in Trauma Center: Second Opinion is the case study for how motion controls will work in the hardcore gaming milieu. It would seem like the ability to cut, inject and forcep by pointing the remote would be the game's greatest asset, but it's the nunchuk that most improves the game. The ability to hot swap surgical tools with a tilt of the thumb stick makes the game's surgical juggling act that much more manageable. And you'll be needing all the help in the ER you can get. The game is still hard as hell.

Time Doesn't Heal Crap

Trauma Center: Second Opinion is set in the near future – a time when AIDS and cancer have been cured. And yet somehow, they haven't figured out a way to give surgeons a little extra time to perform their medical miracles. Life or death time limits add an artificial sense of urgency, not to mention an overdose of difficulty, to most of the missions. Dramatic music and mid-procedure plot twists already keep the adrenaline at merging-onto-the-Autobahn-levels. Thankfully, players can switch difficulties midway through the story if a particular mission is beginning to feel more like a prostate exam than pick-up-and-play fun

Like That Episode Where Dr. House Takes Acid

An outlandish narrative rife with super-diseases, parasites and death doctors strings Trauma Center: Second Opinion's missions together. And while the animation is rudimentary and voice acting minimal, the story is a well-crafted one, pumped full of drama, unique characters and left-field complications. Theses traits may cause severe reactions in gamers allergic to anime-styled visuals. And the prognosis isn't good for those with underdeveloped reading muscles. Aside from those freakazoid side-effects, the prognosis is good. Gamers who crave challenge, plot and the chance to really get their hands dirty with the Wii motion control will respond well to Trauma Center: Second Opinion.

Article by: Gus Mastrapa
Video produced by: Michael Benson