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Published by DreamCatcher Games, LifeSigns: Surgical Unit (Nintendo DS) gives you a story about young surgical intern Tendo Dokuta on Seimei Medical University Hospital as he deal with mostly surgical cases along with his colleagues. The main gameplay quickly reminds you to the similar 2005 release game of Trauma Center: Under the Knife (Nintendo DS), in which you would use the stylus to perform the operation procedures. You would also involved in many conversations, which remind you to Phoenix Wright series (Nintendo GBA & DS).

But unlike Trauma Center and Phoenix Wright series, playing as Tendo-san, your involvement in many conversations and situations would affect the storyline, some of alternatives even might ended up as bad ending. This would include much stressing mini games that is clearly unrelated to medical matters. You were also required to do some history taking and physical examinations, even radio-graphic examinations, to conclude your diagnosis.

Most of the cases and procedures presented in the game are realistic and exist in daily basis, such as acute appendicitis, thoracic trauma, cholestasis, abdominal bleeding and such. So this game should be much entertaining for medical students and even for surgeons.

The game also features many nonplayable characters (NPC) that range from boy-ish leukemic girl to pervert end-stage cancer patient, pioneer physician to glam looking internist, and of course, many girls from nurse to assistant professor. Those Japanese freaks..

Anyway, the graphic might not be as good as Phoenix Wright series or Trauma Center but it would not hurt your eyes. The music is kind of lame that might make you sleep, which is bad if you were actually dealing with real patient.

The North American version of the game had actually been released in November 2007, but it was not until now that BIAWAK had a chance to make some review for this game (since we had no time to play it thanks to clerkship routines). The European version is set to be released in July 2008 though, so it is not that late.

Poster by iR

References:

• LifeSigns: Hospital Affairs, the official website to the European version of the game
• GameSpot Review on LifeSigns: Surgical Unit (Nintendo DS)