The original Trauma Center: Under the Knife for Nintendo's DS sounded like a terrible idea on paper, but actually made for an utterly unique and engaging game. Instead of giving aliens head-shots or leveling up your high-fantasy stereotype, you were obliged to open up "patients" with the stylus and poke around said patients' insides with a range of medical tools, the whole bit woven into a suitably goofy Japanese RPG-style narrative. Second Opinion brings back the same story for Wii owners, but as a game it's considerably improved on several fronts. More importantly, this is a new game, or a fully retooled one, anyway, not just a Wii-ified copy (or "port") of the DS version.

For those who haven't had the pleasure, in the near future, Doctors Derek Stiles works his way from just-completed residency to full-blown surgeon, along the way discovering that he has the "Healing Touch." Just in time, too, as a terrorist-created virus known as GUILT is doing a number on the world.

Players make their way through six story chapters full of intrigue, old-school text/dialogue screens, many an interesting character, a new side-chapter doctor named Nozomi Weaver, and totally reworked gameplay challenges across the board.

As you could rightfully expect, Second Opinion makes use of both the Wii remote and its "nunchuk" attachment, giving a new meaning to the concept of a would-be doctor's "steady hand" (some videogames actually improve with the user's application of a stiff drink or two... Second Opinion isn't one of them). The operations involve the use of various medical tools, including a scalpel, forceps, sterilizing gel, magnifier, syringe, defibrillator and more.

In addition to some familiar tools and a few new ones (that weren't available in the DS version, anyway), Second Opinion offers new operations, a new difficulty level, improved visuals, and even an altered ending to the last chapter of the game.

The nunchuck controller is used to cycle tools from the inventory while the Wii-mote is responsible for the actual laying-of-hands (tools) on the patient in a first-person view. Players must, among other things, make incisions, take ultrasounds, use a tumor-lancing laser and clean out wounds (actually, on that note, despite the game's overall anime-visual sheen, there's a small but definite "ick" factor for gamers sensitive to anything approaching medical gore). For what it's worth, the use of both hands -- on the nunchuck and the Wiimote -- conveys a convincing sense of realistic surgical procedure (though real surgeons may be less than convinced), in what is otherwise a decidedly fanciful (even funny, at times) storyline.

All told, even with its old-school throwback visual presentation (and the fact that most of the story is a retool of the original), Trauma Center Second Opinion is a worthy buy in its own right. Those who have played the DS game should still check out the Wii reincarnation, because it's not just more of the same, it's more of the same, "evolved." There's only one (single-player) way to play, but the off-putting difficulty in some of the original DS challenges have all been addressed and fixed here on Wii; this one definitely walks again under its own power.