Trauma Center: New Blood is the sequel to one of the most unique games of the Wii's launch last year, Trauma Center: Second Opinion (itself a sequel to a similarly unique Nintendo DS title). The game simulates surgical operations using the Wii-mote as a surgical Swiss army knife, cutting, suturing, sanitizing, etc.

The "new blood" in the title refers to the two new surgeons, Dr. Vaughan and Dr. Blaylock. While Dr. Blaylock is attempting to learn the secrets of the healing touch, a secret medical practice that can literally slow time to a crawl, Dr. Vaughan is trying to escape a mistake in his past that is about to catch up with him and a whole lot of other people.

During the course of the game, the doctors are faced with a medical epidemic that takes them from the frontiers of Alaska to the front lines of a South American coup.

In an improvement over the previous games, the dialog is fully voiced this go around. Unfortunately, what hasn't changed, however, is the lengthiness and clunkiness of the story being told. Its slide show of still images that run two or three times as long than the actual missions, also known as the "fun parts." Of course, you can skip through the dialogue/text/story and jump right into the operations, but a snappier presentation would have been appreciated.

Players of previous Trauma Center titles will recognize the game's interface while new residents can get the gist of it all quickly enough as a detailed tutorial breezes through four years of residency in about ten minutes. Using the nunchuk as a selector, the Wii-mote is transformed into a variety of different tools, including an x-ray machine, a scalpel, forceps, whathaveyous. These are used, obviously, to find tumors, make incisions, and pull out growths and whathavetheys.

Sadly, the greatest test of your skills won't be the intricacies of the operations; it's the wrestling of the Wii-mote, which seems to have a touch time recognizing certain movements, and it can take several attempts to pull off even the mundane chores, and the difficult missions are thus harder then they're suppose to be.

New Blood also includes a new co-op option which speeds up operations and makes difficult procedures much easier with two aspiring surgeons having at it instead of just your lonesome self. That said, most operations aren't too difficult to difficult to begin with. It's just brain surgery, after all, not rocket science.

What was impressive in the previous Trauma Center titles were the distinct- albeit faux-sensations of actually performing complex operations. New Blood includes its own memorable procedures, including a cursed liver transplant and some neurosurgery that is more ET than ER. It's okay, though: the difficulty of the operations isn't based on the risk of actually operating on a vital organs -- which would be cerebral and harrowing -- but instead on the complications that arise from of a fictitious biological agent known as Stigma. Stigma is what makes a game of the game, a recurring "boss" that must be killed/cured using a combination of different tools. Unfortunately, the Stigma shtick makes it a little too videogamey and pretty much ruins the pure surgery simulation feel.

All told, Trauma Center: New Blood brings some new characters, a new story and the same creative gameplay expected of the franchise, but for fans of the previous Trauma Center games, New Blood's only real appeal is the new co-op mode. Otherwise, it offers little in terms of fresh or innovative aside from a bio-terror gimmick.