>incestual pairings
>eugenics
>child murder
>patricide
>immolation
>jihad warriors
>dense politics

Yeah, I'm thinking five stars.

This is where Trauma Center jumped the shark for me. It is such a bizarre blend of ideas and conflicting creative directions. Though I appreciate its attempts at modernizing the aesthetics of the series and find the idea of multiple, varied campaigns based on different medical professions to be an interesting step forward, there is a nagging feeling that something was lost in the transition.

A lot of these new campaigns do away with the twitchy and arcadey design of the earlier games to instead focus on really one-note scenarios that rely more on using motion controls as their singular gimmick. That is without mentioning the scenarios that just play like a poor man's Ace Attorney without any mystery or drama.

Everything feels so much more diluted, and with the removal of varied and interesting bioweapon diseases or additional mechanics like the healing touch, Trauma Team just ends up feeling so much more shallow. This shallowness extends to a plot that can't seem to hold a consistent tone, going back and forth between obnoxiously saccharine and contrived anime scenarios, to supposedly tear-jerking drama that's too blunt to be effective. This new game, despite its attempts to be more grounded and also exciting, forgot about the delicate balance the earlier games had of engaging gameplay, and goofy yet exciting stories.

So in a way, I can understand why the series died after this game. It was a last ditch attempt to save this terminal series, but it just wasn't enough to truly make any of it last.