I love this game. It's one of the very few DS games that I take everywhere. Definitely worth the money if you're into surgery games with a story and some difficulty

It's a good game but it's hard too learn but still fun

I thought I’d get this game to kill time while recovering from knee surgery. So, I tried it before then. Next thing you know I’d been playing this handheld till the battery died. Great concept for a game that takes real advantage of the stylus.

If you enjoyed movies like "Outbreak" or other "mystery virus ends life as we know it" stories then "Trauma Center 1" is right up your alley. The game is played from the perspective of a young surgeon fresh out of Residency who finds himself facing the biggest challenge of any medical career: devising treatment for a mystery disease that could potentially kill millions. The game is as much a "novel" as it is a game, which is great if you like a good story as well as nail biting gaming (I sure do!). No need to be more than basically knowledgeable about the human body; surgeries have far more to do with regular gaming activity like "shooting the enemy" (with lasers and colored medications) than with actual surgical techniques. The storyline is creative and engaging and ultimately shocking, and character development pretty good. My one and only beef with this game is the lack of options for "difficulty levels". I like to get the hang of a game on an easier level rather than being frustrated early on while still learning to handle all the "weapon options" (in this case the surgical tools). Having said that, I think this is a game with excellent replay value - I'm sure keeping mine! Game also available for Wii and plays with nunchuck device.

This is a good game if you like surgery stuff. There is a lot of talking in the game, but you can skip through it fast. The game starts out easy but gets way harder as you continue. Graphics are pretty good. It will last you awhile. If your looking for a fast paced surgery/puzzle game, then this game is perfect.

This game was a waste of money, plain and simple. When I looked at the case I was interested because it looked like a real life surgery game, well the graphics were very good but the story line was rediculous!! This story started out at a camp, well it seemed interesting listening to the begining of the story but to sit there for what seemed like forever was retarded! The whole game was these people just talking, if I wanted to read a book I would have bought a book! A little story line is wanted but for them to babble on like a bunch of school girls is overboard! Then when you actually get to a surgery and beat it, its like your getting punished with them talking for ten minutes again! I immediately took the game back after a day! Rated NO STARS!!

I saw this little gem on the Nintendo DS games list online while I was looking for a different game. I'm attending nursing school and I love medical related gameplay elements, so I decided to read the reviews and see what it was all about. It was available at the Game Stop near my apartment, so I decided to give it a try. I fell in love with the game quickly. It's such a great change of pace for me to see a game that fully embraces the capabilities of the Nintendo DS's touch pad. All of the gameplay is entirely contained in the touch pad with the stylus. Most games I've played up until now use the touch screen as a more optional thing. The game, compared to true medicine, isn't very realistic, but it's just a video game and it doesn't in any way take away from the fun you'll have. Pros: - The gameplay is just amazing and enticing. - The surgeries offer a warm challenge; you won't get away floating through the game like cutting paper with scissors, but it's not going to have you wanting to blow up your DS in frustration. - The game sets save points often, generally before each surgery and after cutscenes; you can also skip the text quickly by hitting select. This is helpful when you slip up and fail a surgery and have to start over, or feel like taking a break before trying again, so you don't have to do half the game over again. - While the game has a time limit for surgeries (5 minutes), it's usually way more than enough time to finish each one. It adds that extra challenge and suspense of knowing you have a set amount of time to finish up while never really getting down to the wire (early on) and freaking you out. Cons: - A couple of the tools (almost solely the magnifier; to a much lesser extent, the needle) sometimes won't work properly, which can be annoying when you see your time limit ticking down. - The game only likes to tell you how to do things once. I found myself on numerous occasions staring at the screen blankly because I forgot the next step, or simply because the game didn't explain well enough what I was supposed to do next. Overall, the game is a definite must-have for any DS gamer. The gameplay will never leave you bored, and the replay value is very high (I find myself starting new games often just to redo my favorite surgeries and challenge myself to beat old times). It's a pretty cheap game, and will definitely get you hooked!

I got this for Christmas of 2006, and I still play it regularly. I have honed my skill so that I can beat the whole thing in just under two hours. The moment it ended, I wanted more. Let's start off with the visuals. They are excellent for a DS game, though the framerate does seem to drop on occasion when there's too much going on. They go into the perfect amount of detail so that you can tell what's going on without becoming too realistic. As for the gameplay, it works perfectly on the DS. Everything is very responsive, and trust me, you'll need that responsiveness. Why? This game is brutal. Everyone says things like Mile High Club in Call of Duty 4 and the Ghost Recon games are hard, but those are for little kids compared to what this game will throw at you. However, it does give you enough time to figure out what you're doing before it goes to the harder missions. Don't believe the six-plus hours that it says when you beat the game. You'll have spent more than that due to the challenge level. However, that can't be counted against it. For the story, it's well-written with great characters that you can sympathize with. The plotline itself is far from being standard, this being from Atlus, creators of games set in worlds where rumors come true if enough people think they are. This is a rare occasion where a handheld game surpasses several hundreds of other games regardless of what system they are from. It's tough, well-written, beautiful in art and sound, and fun. This gets my honor of being the best game for DS, and if you can find a copy, buy it immediately before it becomes incredibly rare.

Video games often get a bad rap what with all the killing and shooting and general debauchery. Here though, you save people, and it's fun! On to the game, it's well designed and just a lot of fun overall. The difficulty curve is admittedly quite high towards the end, where luck is as much a factor as skill. The controls generally work correctly, though stitches can prove to be a little bit fidgety if you are in a rush. Selection of tools can be tough on such a small screen, but once you use them enough, you will likely have them memorized, making it less of an issue as you go on. On the note of controls, there is one very important thing to remember. DO NOT play this game in a car, bus, or anywhere where the DS will get jostled. Precision and speed are both very important, and playing somewhere that is moving will just be frustrating. The sound in the game does it's job but is overall forgettable. The graphics are anime-esque / cartoony, and the bodies that you do surgery on have been... anatomically limited... to keep the game to a Teen rating. Also of note, if you are squeamish around blood, there honestly isn't that much in the game. There are spurts when you cut something, but in general the bloodiness is not excessive. That brings us to realism, which I honestly don't know how to rate. I don't personally want too much realism in a game about surgery, because there is a point where fun becomes work, and this game stays firmly on the fun side. However, yes, the parts of the body are in the right place, and you use actual tools (save for some handy magic healing gel). Finally, the story isn't too great, but luckily it never really drags the game too much, and some parts are genuinely interesting if you don't skip it all over. Overall, this is a really enjoyable game that I recommend to anyone with a steady hand and some patience.