This is one of those limited-edition U.S.-only (for once!) DS bundles Nintendo announced last week. As you know, I wore out my old DS, and managed to rationalize quite effectively why buying a brand new one was better than having the old one fixed for free under warranty. I'm a sucker for colors. This arrived in the mail yesterday, and it's real nice -- new car gold.I also played Trauma Center: New Blood, which makes me giddy for a number of reasons. First and foremost, anyone know that this is?
Pff, only my favorite game ever as a kid. My version for my Mac Quadra wasn't color, though. I have a preference for console gaming these days, but when I was a bitty kiddo, I was pretty much strictly a computer kind of girl. Anyway, I had gotten a four-volume comprehensive World Book medical encyclopedia out of my grandparents' garage, and pretty much read it cover-to-cover because I was so excited by this game -- Life & Death, the point-and-click operation sim from The Software Toolworks. It was way gorier than Trauma Center.I wanted to punch this Medical Chief in the face.
I also thought that playing it qualified me to perform genuine operations, despite the game's strong assertion to the contrary. If anyone ever needs an appendectomy, I'm really good at Life & Death!
The surgeons you'd have to choose to support your operations all had elaborate relationship histories. If you picked aides who didn't like each other due to a business deal gone sour or a failed romance, they'd give you terse advice only when absolutely necessary, instead of supporting you constructively. When you were making a diagnosis, you'd have to click your hand all over the patient's belly to find out where the pain was, clued in by their responses ("You hit a tender spot," or "Feels fine.") If you groped the patient too much, they'd eventually give you "I think that's enough, Doctor!" And, "Are you really a doctor?" Then I grew up to write about perv video games. Go figure.Anyway, Trauma Center: New Blood is pretty fun, though Life & Death was way, way harder. Someone's clearly been watching House, too, as the opening theme is a pretty good facsimile, and so are the personal dramas of the rakish, handsomely disheveled medical staff.
[Pictures nicked from the inimitable InsertCredit].
