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Thankfully, you’ve got a whole medical tray of tools at your disposal to keep your patient from dying. The scalpel, forceps, antibiotic gel, syringe, laser, drain, stitches, and ultrasound all return from the original with no new tools being added to the roster. All the tools are controlled by use of the remote’s pointer with the nunchuck being used to quickly select which tool you want to use. It’s a control scheme that actually outdoes the original Nintendo DS design due to the fact that the nunchuck allows for instantaneous tool switching without making you take your focus off of what you’re currently working on. Just make sure you’re playing the game in a position where the sensor bar of the Wii will completely recognize your remote without fault, because this is one game where you will need to be 100% accurate with your remote.

As far as the actual operations go, again not much has changed. There’s a bar at the top that monitors your patient’s vitals and a timer in the upper right that lets you know how much time you have left. If either your patient’s vitals or the timer reaches zero, you fail the operation. To make things easier (or possible), you also have the ability to use your character’s healing touch by holding down the A and B buttons and drawing a star. The healing touch is a special power that allows you to slow down time when you’re playing as Markus, or stop your patient’s vitals from falling when you’re playing as Val.

The big addition to New Blood, aside from the voice acting, is the ability to play the whole game cooperatively. Coop plays out exactly like the single player mode, except you now have an extra set of hands to help you out. What’s great about coop in Trauma Center is that because it is a game that is so heavy on multi-tasking, you can easily set up a strategy for each operation and have each person focus on a specific task. One person can be in charge of keeping the patient’s vitals up while the other can work on the underlying causes. One person can focus on defeating the stigma strain while the other can focus completely on fixing up all of the damage it’s causing. It’s a great system that encourages and rewards teamwork and strategy, something that all good coop games should do.