FerretBrain » Articles » Why I Gave Up On Trauma Center: Under the Knife After Less Than An Hour
FerretBrain: Comments
Why I Gave Up On Trauma Center: Under the Knife After Less Than An Hour by Arthur B
Arthur bemoans the state of the all-important surgery simulation genre.
In order to post comments, you must be logged in. See the Join Us page for more information.
You're not having much luck with your DS at the moment are you? My Xbox 360 is very very shiny indeed *taunt taunt*
The game is, in fact, replete with instances where I was desperate for an opportunity to make some kind of choice to steer the main character away from the path he was blundering about on.
Sounds like Trauma Surgeon Via Rameses
Hm, reading up on Rameses makes me think there's a fundamental split at work in terms of what I want out of a game and what certain designers are trying to achieve. When I play games with a protagonist, I prefer to control that protagonist, and preferably be able to make some meaningful choices along the way, and resent being told what to think. But it seems that both Trauma Center and Rameses occupy a school of thought where the game designer controls the protagonist, and as a player I merely explore him. Rameses particularly irritated me - I don't see why people who produce this sort of thing can't just write short stories instead rather than pretending they're designing games, because that's clearly what the guy wants to do with it.
Oh, and then I go and look at Baf's Guide and holy moly are people easily impressed. To be fair, many of the categories it got nominated in are more about writing than gameplay in text adventures, but it's still irking that it even got nominated as "Best Game" as opposed to "Best Not-Really-Interactive Vignette"...
To be honest, I quite liked Rameses. It's pretty heavy handed and I don't think I'd ever choose to play it again because it is, to a large extent, an exercise in frustration for the player, err "player". But I do genuinely think it was an interesting, and I suspect it would make an unbearable piece of short (non-interactive) fiction because IF does tend to put in this peculiar position of complicity and sympathy no matter what kind of wanker you're controlling (or, in this case, not). I think the difference is that Ramses is very deliberately set up to imprison the player whereas Trauma Surgeon is merely annoying :)