Trauma Center: Under the Knife
Hit the emergency room in an attempt to be the next George Clooney. Our full review of this unique DS title.
by Craig Harris

October 7, 2005 - Trauma Center: Under the Knife is clearly one of those "crazy" ideas spawned out of a design team's brainstorm session held back when Nintendo revealed the Nintendo DS hardware. The whole "virtual doctor" concept isn't new -- games like Mindscape's Life and Death on the PC and Imagic's Microsurgeon on the old-school systems take the cake as the first of their kind, and everyone's tinkered around the classic Operation board game back in childhood. Though games of similar concept have made it to market in the past, Trauma Center on the Nintendo DS is still one of the most original game designs on the handheld system. Don't let the science fool you; this game's fast-paced action that fully utilizes touch screen control. It's a little repetitive in places with the same 10 or so procedures used over and over again. But its enormous challenge level will keep you on your toes, and the fact that it's so unlike anything else on the system makes Trauma Center hard not to recommend for DS owners.