SOTS Game Review - Trauma Center: Second Opinion
It has been a while since I have done one of these - I do apologize! But as you can see, things have been busy around here! TRAUMA CENTER: SECOND OPINION OVERVIEW Dr. Derek Stiles must use his abilities to eliminate the threat of GUILT. REVIEW This one is an older one, but being that I just played it, it is new to me. So you get a review! Trauma Center: Second Opinion is basically a Wii-make of the DS game, Trauma Center: Under the Knife. It is a decent remake – you can barely tell that the game was originally on a handheld console, and they even went so far as to add some extra levels, along with a side-quest of sorts that features a different doctor. When I selected this game, I was basically expecting a souped up game of Operation. And at first, that is exactly what I got. Your first few operations train you in the control style – how to use the nunchuck to select your tool, how to use the tool using the Wii-mote, and what each tool does. The first few operations are standard stuff – removing glass fragments, resetting bones, and excising tumors. Just as you start to get the hang of using the tools and performing the different techniques, the game throws you a weird twist – Super Powers. That was the last thing I expected.
That isn’t the only surprise the game throws your way. After learning about the Healing Touch, you come face to face with the “villain” of the game – GUILT. GUILT is the name of a man-made disease created by Delphi, a terrorist organization. It comes in several different strains, each of which behave differently, and must be combated differently during surgery through the later levels. The game is fairly easy to pick up, and is pretty fun. It definitely makes good use of the Wii’s controller combination, making use of all of the controllers capabilities quite well. Switching between tools is simple and quick, the function of the different tools is fairly logical, and a great deal of your success in the game depends on how steady your hand is. Just as in real surgery. While the game is fun – the focus kind of dampened my enjoyment. Admittedly, it was due to my own ignorance – when I picked this game up I was expecting a straight surgery simulator, and the shift to the super-powered parasite fighter threw me for a loop. When you had to use your surgery tools to disarm a bomb is when it went over the top for me. While they did a decent job remaking the control style for the Wii, they could have done more with the cut scenes. The voice acting was decent, but there was no motion at all. In a small step-up from the Bleach game, the backgrounds are static, but each character will flash on the screen as you hear their lines. Occasionally, as a special treat, the character will be posed slightly differently, to reflect the emotion of a conversation. For a full-priced game, they couldn’t give us any animated cut-scenes? That is incredible.
BOTTOM LINE Overall, this is a fun game. It is a little outside the box, so your family members who aren’t hardcore gamers might enjoy it as well. It does retain some challenging elements to keep your attention though. This game would have been far better if it had stuck to simple surgery, instead of crafting a fictional viral boogeyman for you to face, and dipping into the whole super-power thing. I found myself quickly losing interest in the game after they were introduced. The gimmick took the game from a fun, cerebral, and potentially educational game and made it something of a joke. A real let-down. A fun rental at the very least – might be a buy if you can find a discount copy. At this point, this should be possible. Rating(out of 5):   |
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Off the Cuff: are reviews being manipulated?
Comics, Cartoons, and all things related
By Eric Barrett
Another week, another story about video game publishers and video game reviewers. This time it involves a major magazine, Electronic Gaming Monthly, better known as EGM.
According to a column by Dan Hsu, their editor, certain companies don’t like the “less-than-totally-positive previews” 
EGM has been writing. Anyone who has ever read a gaming preview knows that they are almost always pure fluff with very little based in “final” reality of the game. Usually these previews are nothing more than an advertisement for the game, disguised as “reporting.” So EGM has a somewhat unique stance.
This is the second story in about a month that’s suggested game companies, or more specifically game publishers, are intentionally punishing reviewers for less then positive reviews.
Now this is obviously appalling. It strikes directly at the integrity of a company and the industry. For instance, how can I ever trust CNET (which owns Gamespot, the site of the “original” controversy) with a review?
The bottom line is I can’t.
I will always assume that advertising is guiding their review. Especially when I see negative end-user comments. It will be years before I ever take any pre-release information seriously from Sony, Ubisoft, or anything on Gamespot.
In a digital age, companies can not afford to alienate their customers with heavy handed tactics. People, now more than ever, will find out. And that word will spread. That’s both the beauty and curse of the internet.
Now the question has to be raised, what about comic book reviews?
We all know someone who is convinced a reviewer is a “fan boy” of DC or Marvel. But what can reviewers do to prove their trustworthiness? Or do they even need to?
In my opinion that’s a resounding “yes”. Reviewers of all products need to show that their opinion is legitimate and not store-bought. And in my opinion the only way to do that is to consistently give your honest opinion. If you’re honest, the 
majority of people will trust you, even if they disagree. But if you’re not being honest, why should anyone care what you think?
The good news for the comic book industry is that it’s a lot more fragmented then the game industry. There are fewer “powerful” sites that review comic books. A bad review of a comic book may upset a publisher, but it doesn’t represent a loss of millions of dollars like a negative review of a computer game.
These factors, I think, help to limit the impact of “biased” reviews. But there’s no question, publishers always want good reviews. The question websites and reviewers need to ask is this: is it more important to get news, any news, from a publisher? Or is it more important to remain honest, even if it costs you?
The answer to those questions will determine the future of the site/reviewer.
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January 9, 2008
Off the Cuff: Babylon 5, how we miss you…
Comics, Cartoons, and all things related
By Eric Barrett
It seems J. Michael Straczynski is in the news a lot recently. He certainly seems upset about the direction of Spider-Man 
and One More Day. And frankly I can’t blame him. I’m not particularly happy about it either! But I don’t write Spider-Man, and I don’t currently have an editorial gig at Marvel.
So in a fit of JMS nostalgia I bought the first three season of Babylon 5.
I know nostalgia is supposed to make you remember things more fondly than reality warrants. But in this case, nostalgia wasn’t even close – Babylon 5 is SO much better than I remember.
It’s funnier, has better acting, and the stories are more interesting than I remember. I’m even impressed by the level of CG for a mid-90’s TV show. They look better than some shows currently running!
But there was one area that really stood out - they are packed with hope and optimism. Something that is seriously lacking in today’s cynical TV programming. Each episode ends with the good guys finding a way out of an impossible situation. And they almost always end on a joke. How refreshing is that?
What is the last TV show that you watched that you felt better after viewing it, then before?
Star Trek was excellent at that (until the end of TNG). I always found StarGate: SG1 to be encouraging, at least until Richard Dean Anderson left. And that about sums up my list. TV, movies, and comic books, in my opinion are too obsessed with the “reality” of misery. It seems that so much of our “entertainment” is built around the idea that it’s fun to watch people suffer and be miserable, because that’s “real life.”
I for one, am glad to see a change of pace!
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The Gamer’s Quagmire #57: Learning to Enjoy a Playpen
Everything you wanted to know about gaming, and less.
by Jamison DeLorenzo
You need forgive the embedded juvenile humor for the lead-in question of the week: how do you know when it is okay to play in the sandbox? Several reviewers have felt the need to pound Assassin’s Creed for reasons that flew over my head. It is true that I am nowhere near an established or astute reviewer that many paid professionals are, but sometimes it takes the wit of a strung out English major (they’re always useful for needlessly comparing totally unassociated ideas) to critique design choices in a game that have no direct impact on the overall quality of a game.
It was not all that difficult to find several scathing reviews of Assassin’s Creed and to create a set of flaws that people had with the game. The universal opinion of the game seems to be that while it was drawn out and somewhat laborious the game was a lot of fun. Many reviews are more polarized than that, but I feel that this was a fairly common sentiment amongst most reviewers. There all always exceptions (and no, they never “prove” the rule… by definition), and in this case the most glaring are the ones that stipulate that it was a horrible design choice to make Assassin’s Creed a sandbox game.
What is that exactly? Sandbox games refer to games where the player is given overall objectives to complete but is given free reign on how to do it. GTA is a popular example when describing this style of game for obvious reasons. You’re almost never told what route to take to a specific place, which weapons to bring, which car to drive, what steps to take once you get there, or anything like that. The order in which you complete several objectives isn’t necessarily important either. Metal Gear is another game like that, only exercising stealth is encouraged.
Consider the popularity of these two franchises for a moment. There are contributing factors like story and graphics that makes these games what they are, but giving players free roaming capability is the highlight of the game. Combining that with the dark side of what you can do in GTA is what makes that franchise the powerhouse that it is right now. A free roaming environment is one of the many major draws of the larger RPG’s for many people. Giving gamers the ability to do what they want when they want in a game is, in my opinion, the best way to make games. The short version of this reads as follows: constraints are bad.
Upon reading multiple articles talking about the recent rash of games attempting to emulate a sandbox environment I began to wonder which games were being talked about besides Assassin’s Creed. Have there been any? I sure haven’t played any, and I don’t recall any popular ones that people have been talking about. Saint’s Row is the only other franchise that comes to mind, and that’s much more of a GTA clone than just another sandbox game.
I submit to you that Assassin’s Creed, if you look at it as a GTA clone, it, for the most part, succeeds. Grabbing all of the flags is basically just like grabbing all the hidden packages. Doing all of the extra missions (saving the citizens) is a lot like completing all of the now defunct rampages. Completing all basic mission objectives gives you free reign to recklessly roam the city, causing as much havoc as you deem appropriate, before completing them is a direct parallel. Whether I’m performing acrobatic face plants into alleyways or crashing a sports car into a pawn shop I’m having fun. That’s they key to a good game isn’t it? Fun?
The flaws that exist in Assassin’s Creed are the battle system (which is mindlessly repetitive) and the later missions not offering anything that new. Those are very gaping flaws that prevent the game from being as epic as Ubisoft wanted it to be. The only thing that prevents the game from being a total rinse and repeat is the moving story, but any good reviewer sees past that when discussing the game as a whole. Any competent critic, or common sense enthusiast, also figures out that a lack of mission variety and rewards has nothing to do with a gameplay mechanism.
Yes, a lot of the extras you get by exploring the world don’t provide you with a whole lot. However, I liked climbing insanely tall buildings and swan diving in conveniently placed haystacks. I loved finding perches and gazing on the horizons. Did exploring the ends of the Earth net me anything interesting in terms of rewards, story, or abilities? No, but that’s a problem that can be easily resolved without nuking the environment. I did expect a fuller story by finding all those extra flags and saving all of those citizens. My DNA sequence was more complete as a result- why didn’t that amount to anything? The lack of reward was frustrating, but it didn’t stop me from continuing to hunt for everything.
It’s basic logic- if you don’t enjoy exploring areas or already know it’s going to be tedious then don’t complain after you do it. It was painfully obvious going in that the size of the world Ubisoft created for the game was gigantic (even though all of the major cities were remarkably close to each other) and I knew I was going to hate saving all the citizens, hunting down all the flags, and killing and endless amount of guards. I did it anyway knowing that is largely unnecessary, and if it weren’t for a free-roaming environment I would have been in those annoying areas where the places the game developers didn’t want me to go were blocked with invisible walls. I would also have been forced down a path instead of running across rooftops while dodging arrows in whatever direction I felt like.
Call me insane, but I know what I prefer.
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January 8, 2008
On The Shelf This Week - 01.09.08
HIGHLIGHTS OF THE WEEK
Order any of the below titles by clicking here!
AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #546, $3.99, 64 Pages
Written by Dan Slott, Art by Steve McNiven, Dexter Vines, and Morry Hollowell
Whoa boy - here we go! Brand New Day starts with this issue.
The road to this point has been fraught with turbulence. Most recently we have seen the public “flap” between J. Michael Straczynski and Joe Quesada over the ending of One More Day (though both have publically maintained a professional overtone throughout the discussion, you know all is not perfect), and when it was all said and done, fans seemed to fall pretty well on JMS’s side. The reboot was confusing, illogical, and ultimately didn’t fit into Spider-Man’s character (a deal with the devil? Come on!).
But what is done is done. There is no denying that something had to be done with Spider-Man’s character. No matter what you may say, he was burdened with an overabundance of bad continuity (and I am not talking about the marriage per se - think more recent), and a mild reboot would have fixed a lot of that. So accepting One More Day as it is - as we really have no choice, it is up to the new creative teams to see if they can salvage some good from a fairly bad situation. With Amazing Spider-Man shipping three times a month, we should know pretty quickly if things are going to improve.
BAT LASH #2 (OF 6), $2.99, 32 Pages, DC Comics
Written by Peter Brandvold & Sergio Aragones; Art by John Severin; Cover by Walter Simonson
There has been some mixed reviews about this mini - but all easy to explain. Almost all of the bad reviews seem to be coming from people who remember the original Bat Lash, and seemed to miss the fact that this is intended to be an origin story. Of course Bat isn’t going to be as competent as he would be when he was a fully-fleshed-out gunslinger! This is the story of how he gets there.
This mini started of strong, and should finish well. It probably wouldn’t make for a good ongoing - Bat Lash just isn’t that deep a character, but the occasional story here and there isn’t a bad idea. Plus it gives Jonah Hex a little company in DC’s Western Universe.
HULK #1, $2.99, 32 Pages, Marvel Comics
Written by Jeph Loeb, Art by Ed McGuiness, Dexter Vines, and Jason Keith
Whoa boy - another hot button comic for Marvel - the brand new “red” Hulk. Coming off of an outstanding run on the Incredible Hulk from Planet Hulk and beyond, fans are scared to death. And why not? A brand new Hulk, a brand new Abomination, both with seemingly no ties to the original… what isn’t to dear?
Jeph Loeb is an outstanding writer - and with some luck he will make something out of this. It is too early to really trash this one yet… Loeb deserves more credit than that. Even still - the wait for this one is a nervous one.
JLA CLASSIFIED #50, $2.99, 32 Pages, DC Comics
Written by Roger Stern; Art by John Byrne & Mark Farmer; Covers by Joshua Middleton
This is being billed as the reunion of the Roger Stern/John Byrne team - but really the only thing most people care about is Roger Stern doing a DC story arc. The man is a comic icon, and it is always good to see his name on the byline of anything I might happen to be reading. JLA Classified arcs are definitely hit and miss, but this is a good month to pick this title up. It’s pretty well a sure thing that it is going to be worth your money.
NOVA #10, $2.99, 32 Pages, Marvel Comics
Written by Dan Abnett, Art by Wellinton Alves and Guru
Man, this is just great. I was wondering how they were going to work Nova and Gamora. I saw that they were going to be enemies - and that didn’t quite sit right. But with the Phalanx in the mix, it makes the story just sizzle. This issue should be devoted to the two of them trapped together, forced to help each other to survive. And you just know she is going to do whatever she can to weaken his resistance to the Phalanx virus, just as he is going to try and get her to fight it.
Abnett has danced around Annihilation: Conquest admirably. You know Nova is going to burst onto the scene at some point, but keeping him away for now is keeping him from stealing the show and diminishing the other great characters involved. These little personal side-quests are doing the job nicely. This is the best Marvel book on the shelves right now - and all of you should be picking it up.
SPOTLIGHT PICK OF THE WEEK
TWELVE #1 (OF 12), $2.99, 32 Pages, Marvel Comics
Written by J. Michael Straczynski, Art by Chris Weston, Gerry Leach, and Chris Chuckry
It might seem strange to dig up a bunch of old characters and call that fresh and new, but for Marvel, it actually kind of is. Long ago they sacrificed some of their older characters that might seem cheesy by today’s standards, while DC maintained a lot of them and allowed them to grow. The DCU is all the richer for it. Is the Twelve an effort to make up for that? Tough to say, but it could well do a lot to remedy that weakness in the Marvel character universe.
The preview really didn’t serve to showcase the best showings of the characters involved, but it did give us a glimpse of what to expect. It is tough to promise that this issue will be awesome, but there are high hopes for the success of these characters. Many of them sticking around would add a lot of much-needed dimension to the Marvel Universe.
DC COMICS
52 AFTERMATH THE FOUR HORSEMEN #6 (OF 6) $2.99 Now: $2.69
BAT LASH #2 (OF 6) $2.99 Now: $2.69
BATMAN STRIKES #41 $2.25 Now: $1.99
GEN 13 #16 $2.99 Now: $2.69
GREEN ARROW BLACK CANARY #4 $2.99 Now: $2.69
INFINITY INC #5 $2.99 Now: $2.69
JLA CLASSIFIED #50 $2.99 Now: $2.69
SUPERMAN #672 $2.99 Now: $2.69
WONDER GIRL #5 (OF 6) $2.99 Now: $2.69
DEVILS DUE
SHEENA #4 $3.50 Now: $2.99
IMAGE COMICS
INFINITE HORIZON #2 (OF 6) $2.99 Now: $2.69
MARVEL COMICS
AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #546 $3.99 Now: $3.49
BEYOND TP $14.99 Now: $11.99
CIVIL WAR CHRONICLES #7 $4.99 Now: $4.39
ESSENTIAL CAPTAIN AMERICA TP VOL 04 $16.99 Now: $13.99
HULK #1 $2.99 Now: $2.69
HULK #1 MCGUINNESS RETAILER VAR $59.99
MIGHTY AVENGERS #7 $2.99 Now: $2.74
NEW WARRIORS TP VOL 01 DEFIANT $14.99 Now: $11.99
NOVA #10 $2.99 Now: $2.69
ONSLAUGHT REBORN #5 (OF 5) $2.99 Now: $2.69
PUNISHER WAR JOURNAL #15 $2.99 Now: $2.69
TWELVE #1 (OF 12) $2.99 Now: $2.69
ULTIMATE X-MEN TP VOL 17 SENTINELS $17.99 Now: $14.99
WOLVERINE #61 $2.99 Now: $2.69
X-FACTOR #27 $2.99 Now: $2.59
NOTE: Opinions here may not reflect those of X-World Comics LLC or it’s staff and are solely the opinions of the writer.
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