Trauma Center: Under the Knife

Maybe the game that best defines the DS for me. There's more than enough original moments to make this a must play. The story is so poorly executed it wraps around to being charming, especially considering how big they went with it. I adore the braindead musings on death. It does get hard, but it's doable with repetition or pinching strategies from a guide. It can't keep up the pace of constant new mechanics and puzzles you get in the first third of the game, and thus it loses momentum. But still, there's just enough to see you through to the end.

Can't give it more than three stars because of its many flaws, but it's so original, and such a distillation of the best parts of the DS, that it really is a must play for anyone vaguely curious. A favourite and a classic, if not a great game.

A fairly original premise with some rocky foundations. Atlus seemingly had a tough job figuring out how to make the act of surgery into a videogame that is actively compelling, but the first Trauma Center gives it a pretty good shot, showcasing the tense circumstances with high risk arcade gameplay. You can kinda sorta boil it all down to glorified QTEs and dexterity challenges, but it's all presented well enough and has enough credence behind it for a while.

But eventually the veil is dropped as the story goes into fighting viruses and microorganisms with lasers and eventually defusing a bomb with surgical tools. Not helped by fairly middle of the road and child-like delivery of this story.