Customer Reviews

Lifesigns Surgical Unit

5 star:		(0)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Unlike a similar game "Trauma Center", Lifesigns is not a puzzle game where you constantly do surgery over and over, it is an adventure game where you talk to patients, form relationships with coworkers and other things that actually form a storyline.

Yes the story may seem juvenile at first, and the translation is not perfect, but after one day I was hooked. The surgery is not as gimmicky as Trauma Center, and seems far more realistic.

If you like anime and want something more akin to a phoenix wright or hotel Dusk game, this may be for you.

Lifesigns: Surgical unit is fairly straightforward point and click adventure game, with endearing characters and well structured surgeries thrown in. It isn't groundbreaking, and I would have liked to have spent more time on medical game play, but overall the game is fun and a pleasant way to kill a few hours.

The surgeries start out very simple, but quickly progress to being challenging without being impossible. There's a certain glee that can only be achieved through successfully trepanning a skull. I found the surgeries themselves different enough to stay fresh, with graphics that nicely balanced a need for realism without going over the top.

My chief concern with the game is simply that I would have liked to have seen a higher ratio of game play involving medical issues as compared to running about solving the character's personal problems. Two of the five episodes take place on a vacation island, not the hospital, and much game time is spent running around matchmaking for your little sister and convincing a chief that little elves aren't trying to sabotage his festival (honestly). (Surgeries do take place in the island scenario as well, but they seemed relatively infrequent) I began to really resent those little elves for disrupting my surgical time.

Inside the hospital, I found the story lines varied and interesting. Once consequence of having fewer surgeries is that the patients you do have, have quite a lot of personality to them. There are sad moments in the game as a result of this attachment as well.

Check out Professor Sawai, you'll see what I mean.

First of all: this is not Trauma Center. This is not Phoenix Wright. The series started in Japan way before the former, and though it's an adventure game, the feel is entirely different to the latter. Despite the soap-operaish storyline, this is ultimately more realistic than either game. Trauma Center was great fun, but lost the plot for me once I started drawing pentagons and fighting bug monsters in the operating theatre. Lifesigns sticks with fairly typical operations in a relatively realistic hospital setting. The simulation part is similar to the ancient PC game, Life and Death, in that you're expected to follow standard procedures and understand some of the basic requirements of surgery; there's little hand-holding here.

The major downside is that this is a translation of the second game in the series; the first was exclusive to Japan. Consequently, you're thrown into the story with only a basic explanation of who your character is, and the setting in which he works. I hope they eventually give the first game an English release. The translation is also simple and patchy; don't expect the outstanding level achieved by the Phoenix Wright games. Lifesigns sticks with the Japanese names for all characters, and the game has some awkward dialogue. The graphical style takes some adjusting; it's anime-style, but sort of sketchy. The character designs are great though, and the characters themselves are interesting and reasonably well-developed. There's also a very sweet little romance subplot between you and another intern doctor, if you do well enough on the operations for each chapter.

I'm not quite sure what the other reviewer meant when they said this game shows Japanese people in a bad light. First...it's a Japanese game, by Japanese writers, and the translation is actually fairly literal (hence some of the awkward dialogue). Also, it trades in some typical anime stereotypes - attractive but unattainable older woman (your supervisor), flirtatious but slightly inept young male protagonist, meek and devoted young girl (the nurse), etc.

It's true, there is a lot of text, and you spend a fair amount of time outside of the operating theatre. But this is the nature of the game; it's about the setting and the characters as much as the medical procedures. Sort of a dating-sim/adventure/surgery sim, if that makes sense. If you hate reading dialogue and description, skip this game; you'll get little out of it. Try Trauma Center instead, there's little characterization or dialogue and much more direct gameplay (even if the plot does turn ridiculous by the last few stages). But if you like a fun story and a little bit of light-hearted soap-opera with your simulations, give Lifesigns a try. I honestly didn't expect much at first, but I'm glad I picked it up!

I bought this game believing that it would allow me to examine patients and perform surgery... how naive of me. Unfortunately, this game is nothing more than a misogynistic soap opera. Notice the teen rating. This can't possibly be for the gore of surgery, since there is very little of that in the game.

Here are the things I don't like about the game:

1. Almost no surgery! In 3 "days" in the game (about 4-5 hours of play), I have had only one patient. I had maybe 3 minutes of "examination" (dragging the stylus across her abdomen) and about 5 minutes of surgery. The surgery was not even fun or interesting.

2. It is BORING. Most of the play consists of conversations where I (as a male intern) alternately offend and attempt to seduce the other characters. Also, I do not have control of these conversations. It's just a matter of tapping the screen through endless dialogue that bears a tenuous relationship with medical practice at best. In fact, some of the situations have nothing to do with the hospital at all, like when I went to buy a birthday present for my supervisor (a woman that I am apparently trying to seduce).

3. I have little control over the game play. As I mentioned above, I am permitted no choices regarding interactions with other characters. I just have to click around the hospital locations available to me at the time and talk with people. I have played this game for 4-5 hours altogether, because I keep hoping for more patients. So far it hasn't happened. There's nothing I can do to speed things along, because the game requires you to converse with certain people in a specific order for the game to progress.

4. It shows Japanese people in a bad light. No doubt about it. This issue was initially a minor annoyance but has become quite bothersome. Although the characters are Anglo-looking anime people, they have Japanese names and use -san and -sensei after the names. The way these people interact is not an American way of communicating at all. Also, occasionally an outburst will be printed in Japanese characters (foul language that they didn't want to translate?). My problem is not that the characters are culturally Japanese but that I don't believe they are an accurate representation of Japanese people (I think). The only Japanese people I know are culturally American, so I have no basis for comparison, but this game has made me wonder: are all Japanese men really dominating and disrespectful toward women? Are all Japanese women either angry/defensive or seductive/flirtatious? Obviously I don't really believe this, but the game would certainly lead me to these conclusions.

I wish I had researched this game before buying it. Sadly, it was an impulse buy at a mall store. I remembered having a surgery computer game when I was a kid and how much I loved it, so I immediately picked this one up when I saw it. What a disappointment. Please learn from my mistake!

This game has a alot of text. But that is what I like. There are multiple endings , so it has alot of replay value. There are surgies but i like creating a web of relationships and seeing what will happen. If you want straight surgery than this is not what you want but if you like a bit of both, try life signs. I loved it. But i also loved Hotel dusk and that game was loaded with text.

Ever since I first bought my DS, I quickly became hooked on adventure games (no, I didn't play them on PC previously - I first got into adventure gaming on the DS platform). I've played several adventure games including Hotel Dusk, Trace Memory, Broken Sword, Time Hollow, Jake Hunter: Detective Chronicles, Theresia, and, of course, the magnificent Ace Attorney series. Of course I picked up Lifesigns because I thought to myself "Ah ha! Another adventure game! Now I can pretend to be a doctor without having any medical skills at all! Huzzah!". First off, let me get the obvious question out of the way: have I played Trauma Center? No I have not (and I wouldn't want to either; Trauma Center just doesn't sound like my cup of tea). Neither did I pick up this game expecting it to be like Trauma Center; I was fully expecting an adventure game, not a surgery simulator. Well, let's see what I got...

Graphics (score 8/10): The graphics aren't bad. They remind me of the Ace Attorney series in that you have semi-animated sprites and static backgrounds. Bascially a ton of adventure games have this type of graphics. Anyway, the graphics look good; the backgrounds are detailed and crisp-looking and the character portraits change facial expression enough that they look lively. The characters are anime-style, which I like (but if you hate anime then you might want to steer clear). During the surgical portions, the bodies look realistic enough without being gory at all. So if you are the squeemish sort, no need to worry here. However, Dr. Sawaii's hair freaks me out a bit...

Music (score 7/10): The music is decent enough. It doesn't strike me as particularly good or bad really. I guess I'd say it's just average. The game designers did a good job of making sure there was enough musical variety so expect to hear more than just one track the whole time. Oh, there're no voice overs but that's not unusual for a DS game.

Characters (score 6/10): Well, hmm... I think this game fancies itself as a character-driven experience. The only problem is that I feel that the characters are just not strong enough to succeed in this goal. Poor Dr. Tendo is likable enough, but he doesn't have a particularly strong personality. What about his coworkers? Well, they are either as bland as he is or just plain annoying. I wanted to strangle Aoshima sometimes. Basically, this game is populated by anime stereotypes. You've got the attractive older woman who's basically unattainable for poor Dr. Tendo, the annoyingly moody girl his own age, the uber-cheerful, sweet and helpful woman, etc. Oh, and of course everyone is always trying to flirt with Dr. Tendo while he remains oddly oblivious (this really started to get on my nerves later on - why is Dr. Tendo so stupid!?!). I swear after awhile this game was starting to feel like an episode of Tenchi Muyo. Furthermore, while I realize that this is probably a Japanese culture thing, I started to get incredibly annoyed with all the constant apologizing and offering to help that went on. For example, someone would say, "can I help you with that?" and the other person would say "no, I've got it, it's fine" and then the first person would say "are you sure, I'd like to help" and then the other person would say "no really, I've got it", then the first person would say "oh sorry, I just wanted to be helpful", etc. This basically goes on forever. It's not so bad until episode 3 and 4 where every other conversation is like this. I felt like pulling my hair out! Just let him help or he'll never shut up! Sigh, I know it's cultural but after the fifteenth conversation like this, it really starts to get on one's nerves... This issue really reflects a broader problem: there is too much contrived drama in this game. Have you ever watched a really annoying romantic comedy where the characters constantly fight because of ridiculous misunderstandings that could be solved easily if anyone involved wasn't an idiot? Well, that's what this game is like. This is true especially in the third and fourth episode where it feels like the characters are constantly bickering to no real point or purpose. Sigh... In general, though, the real problem is that while these characters weren't as awful and dull as they could be (although some of them are very annoying), they didn't feel interesting enough. If you are going to go the humorous route (and I felt this game was trying) then you had better go all the way with the wacky quirkiness. Or, if the game is serious, then the characters need to have complex and compelling personalities that one can become attached to and empathize with. As much as I hate to keep bringing this up, the Ace Attorney series managed to do both with smashing success. As it is, the characters are not quite strong enough to carry this game.

Story (score 6/10): Because adventure games are more dialogue-intensive and less action-focused than other game genres, an adventure game needs one of two things to keep it compelling: either endearing, interesting characters or a strong, engrossing storyline. Preferably both. As I've already mentioned, the characters leave a bit to be desired. Unfortunately, this game also lacks a cohesive narrative structure of any kind. There really isn't much of an overarching plot to tie any of the events of this game together. What the game does give you are a few semi-related medical cases to deal with, per episode, interspersed with endless amounts of office politics and dealing with coworkers (later you'll be dealing with the people you meet on vacation). None of the little vignettes are particularly compelling enough that I could point to any Episode and say "that's a really interesting story", except maybe for Episode 5, which is quite good. However, even though Episode 5 is quite good, if the story's taken that long to get good, then I feel that it's a "fail" in this category. Having little character mini-stories/vignettes would've worked better if there was some kind of larger narrative within an episode to tie things together (the story is a bit more focused in Episode 5, which is why it's better than the others). It's clear that this game is trying to be character-driven instead of narrative-driven, but as I mentioned earlier, the characters are just not strong enough to carry this game.

Gameplay (score 7/10): This is a bit of a catch-all category for me. Well, the gameplay involves a lot of text - not really a surprise for this genre. Those who wanted to spend most of their time in surgeries will be disappointed since the majority of your time is spent talking to people. Thankfully, this doesn't bother me at all (at least, it wouldn't have bothered me if there had been some kind of compelling storyline). Usually you just move from location to location talking to people to move the plot (such as it is) forward. Occasionally, you'll need to use your collection of items in the medical record to convince someone to do something. Other than those things, you'll be performing surgeries. These are multi-step processes with gameplay such as moving your stylus in a wavy line to suture a wound or sliding your stylus in an exact spot to make an incision. Don't worry, it's not too hard since you can hold down the L or R button to "concentrate" and see the line where you need to make that incision/suture/etc. The surgery gameplay isn't too bad, but there are a few occasions where the game's detection of the correct area of action is actually off from the image on-screen. I had to use an FAQ to figure out why my catheter kept puncturing the side of the blood vessel when I was nowhere near it. Thankfully, such moments are not terribly common. I also have a couple of other complaints. Firstly, the text speed is a bit too slow for my liking. You can speed it up by double-tapping the screen, but it would've been nice to have an option to set a text speed. Also, if you are bothered by grammar problems, there are some typos here and there, but not enough to make it unintelligible. I do have a positive note here: unlike many other adventure games, this game has several different endings, which is quite a nice addition. If you aren't bored senseless by the story then you could conceivably get a lot of replay value out of this game.

Overall (score 6/10): NOTE this score is not an average; it's my subjective overall score. I can't really recommend this game. On the one hand, it'll disappoint people looking for a good surgery sim since the main focus is on character interaction. On the other hand, it'll disappoint adventure game fans since the characters and story are not quite strong enough to hold one's interest. I might've said that this game would appeal to medical students (it has a lot of medical jargon in it) but they'd be disappointed by the sparse number of actual surgeries performed. I feel so bad for this game because it's so very close to being a good, fun adventure game with an anime flavor, but it just didn't quite make it. Unfortunately Lifesigns is just a bit too dull and mediocre to recommend to anyone - not when there are so many other fine adventure games available on the DS you could be playing instead. In fact, I'd recommend any of the games I listed in my introduction over this one - so go play those instead.

My daughter wanted all the games that would have to with Medical, so that she possible use them as a study tool and to practice what she has learned in Nursing school.

Lifesigns: Surgical Unit is less about surgery and more about...well, it's kind of hard to figure out. Mixing elements of Trauma Center: Under the Knife and the Phoenix Wright series, Lifesigns puts you in the shoes of Dr. Tendo, and follows his adventures and conversations in the surgical world. Where as Trauma Center was all about the deep gameplay, Lifesigns makes you navigate around the hospital, and talk, talk, talk. Seriously, there's so much talking and dialogue here that the game quickly grows boring. By the time you actually get to perform an actual surgery, you'll discover that the surgical gameplay is quite simplistic, and nowhere near as deep as you may be led to believe by the game's box and cover art. The surgeries themselves are few and far between, with all the talking and dialogue thrown everywhere else. As a whole, Lifesigns is easy to pick up and get into, and the game is well animated as well, but the shallow, boring gameplay and disappointing surgery elements are what ultimately kill the game. All in all, if you're expecting another Trauma Center here, you'll be quite disappointed, and you are much better sticking with that game instead.

This game is very confusing to figure out, I have owned it for almost a month and can not figure out how to play it.