If you are like me, when you see a game about something that conjures images of long dentist appointments, sitting in a waiting room for long periods of time or receiving bad news from a check up, you aren’t that inclined to inflict more torture on yourself. Thankfully, Trauma Team is here to break down your preconceptions and show you an excellent game that teaches a lot about the good side of being a doctor and has some unique and entertaining things to offer as well. An anime style game that focuses heavily on developing each character and enriching the story with all kinds of details, this doctor’s office visit will leave you thoroughly satisfied.

The main focus of Trauma Team is playing through the stories of six doctors of varying professions. This was one of the things I liked most about the game. Right off the bat, you are given several interesting careers to play through, each of which is engaging and entertaining. The rich cast includes characters like Maria Torres, a paramedic who provides aid to victims at disaster sites, and Gabe Cunningham, a diagnostician who finds patient symptoms and diagnoses them. Each has their own reasons for being a doctor and their own problems in life. After playing each character, you begin to see intertwining events and understand more about who these people are.

Naturally, you’re wondering about the gameplay of each type of doctor. With simple and well-designed controls, each surgery style is easy to learn. The simple, cartoon graphics lend an upbeat atmosphere to most of the game, and they do a good job of leaving out all the blood and gore that would accompany a real surgery. The dance and techno music in the background also keeps things happy and light. Most professions are variations of surgery. Each has its own set of tools you can cycle through with the Nunchuck and use with the Wii-mote. The Wii-mote portion of the controls usually involves moving your cursor and tracing dotted lines; sometimes,you have to twist the Wii-mote, or push it forward and back. Restarting a patient’s heart involves either using a defibrillator, where the Wii-mote and Nunchuck each function like one of the pads, or by striking the patient’s chest until their pulse returns and using a swinging motion with your controller. Some Items — like the scalpel or the stabilizing medicine — are common to each of these professions, but each has its own unique tools as well. For example, the orthopedic surgeon has a laser cutter for shaping synthetic bones, while the paramedic has gauze and bandages. Your item list will appear on the left side of the screen whenever you call it up using the Nunchuck. That’s all there is to the interface, which means it is simple, easy and allows you to focus on the task at hand.

Each profession will either have a gauge that shows the limit of mistakes you can make or a meter showing the remaining vitals of your patient. If you make too many mistakes or allow your patient’s vitals to reach zero, depending on the profession you are playing, you will lose the game and have to start that particular surgery over again. The difficulty level in this game isn’t all that high, meaning that any player can pick up the game and learn the basics quickly. However, this does mean that veterans of the Trauma series may be a bit disappointed. This isn’t that big of a stumbling block, and the game retains its quality all the same.

Speaking of quality, the game does have a lot to offer. The gameplay time itself runs more than 20 hours to complete the story. In the interest of avoiding spoilers, suffice to say there is more to the game beyond playing each character’s story. Their stories all intertwine into one grand finale, one final plot. The plot in Trauma Team is excellent, as is the voice acting that accompanies it. Hundreds upon hundreds of voice clips are used from the cutscenes to the gameplay. The story is told in two ways. The bulk of the plot is told through cutscenes that look like pages from a comic book, with panels, dialogue bubbles and even an occasional sound effect spelled out. The other storytelling device is the in-game dialogue, which covers smaller details or elaborates on the cutscene material. The only downside to this system is that the game relies heavily on the cutscenes, which wouldn’t be a problem, except that the scenes are very, very slow. There are often long, awkward pauses of as much as a few seconds between each voice clip, and this allows things to drag. Whenever a dramatic moment is being built, a lot of times it loses its momentum by the time the next character finally blurts their line out. The only other problem is that there are rarely, if ever, any animations in the cutscenes. Instead, there are just a series of still images. Whenever some animation should have happened, the game just moves the images around, like cardboard cutouts. It just doesn’t look that good. Although these things may get annoying at times, this game really does make up for it.

And so, what would you call Trauma Team? Certainly not just a doctor simulator, nothing to be feared or worried over like a real appointment might be. This game proves to be incredibly fun for anybody, not just those who are headed for the medical industry or excited about operating on people. I would recommend this game to anybody, even if you’re a little skeptical, because I know I was at first. If you’re not sure, though, renting or watching some material about this game is a good idea and might help you make that final decision. If you do get Trauma Team, your money and your time will be well-spent.