(no subject)

[kjorteo]

Trauma Center's difficulty curve and what it demands of you and therefore how good you get as you progress (just because you can't possibly make it that far until you're awesome enough), my God....

Now that I'm two operations into chapter 7 (with the A-or-above streak still alive, on Hard), I suddenly wondered if I could take my "apparently I'm good enough at Trauma Center to have made it to chapter 7 with an A-or-above streak on Hard" skills and XS every single operation in chapter 1.

...

AND I DID.

AAAAAAAAAHAHAHAHA

• Refugee Camp: Easy XS on the...second try. It had been a while since I did reassemble-the-bone jigsaw puzzle levels and I had to shake off a bit of rust in that regard, but other than that, I'm not sure how I ever only got an A before.
  
• Novice Mistake: This one cheated. One of the special bonuses is getting 5 COOLs, and the only way to get a COOL on removing a Powell Procedure tumor is to just know where it is and carve it out without using the ultrasound. Once I knew that, I got the XS on about the third try, because it's one of those operations where the threshold is extremely close (like getting XS at 5,000 points total while I usually come in with a 4,995-point S or something, which has happened by the way) so things like finishing two seconds faster so I have time to stabilize once at the end just to milk the last 25 points out of the vital bonus or whatever ended up being really important.
  
• Hidden Peril: You can't fool me, this is the exact same operation as the first of the three patients in 4-5 (A Rough Night.) Do you have any idea how many times I replayed that damned operation because I was stuck on the second or third patient? If you're going to make me do that operation again except only having to do a third of it, at least make it one of the thirds that actually gave me some trouble. Laughably easy XS on the first try.
  
• Civil War: XS on the first try. I thought I wouldn't get it because I thought I blanked out a bit too much at certain points ("crap, need the, um... crap, drain, yes, that's what I need. That's that button... wait, no, I mean that one, ARGH") but apparently I rocked it anyway. Go figure.
  
• Fever: I was used to trying to speed run operations by this point and actually murdered the patient quite a few times because, wait, holy crap, you actually need to stop and stabilize regularly and play defense on vitals on this one. :O On the first try in which I actually won, I finished with 3:59.5 or so to spare and therefore thought I missed the XS (thinking there was probably going to be a "complete with 4:00 remaining" time bonus I just barely missed,) but the cutoff actually turned out to be 3:30 and I got it.

No I'm not going to XS the rest of the game, don't be ridiculous.

Comments

[davidn]

It definitely puts you on to a whole new plane of reaction speed - I played through UTK1 again and was surprised by how readily I could breeze through it... except Deftera. I even crashed the game due to too much going on at once at one point - it locked up mid-suture on the fourth of the string of five Kyriaki patients. By the time people finish UTK2, I think they just see the world in slow-motion, like in The Matrix.

Even then I haven't got past X1 again, but I'm fairly certain that I could now just about do it without the Healing Touch.

[kjorteo]

I'm actually not as afraid of the thought of X1 in UTK2 as I probably should be, since something about how they changed the way Kyriaki works actually seems to make it easier for me now. I mean, yes, the queen and the eggs, those certainly don't help, but the change in focus (before: they go absolutely insane until they reach the wound limit and then stop, so you just have to let them do it and then gel the entire field every two seconds and fight them in between, now the idea seems to be to suture every wound the instant it appears and use the time they're swimming around with no wounds at all on the field before they strike again to raise vitals or fight them) might actually be a good thing.

I'm sure I'll regret ever saying that once I actually get to UTK2 X1, of course. However, right now I'm going to naively predict that, out of everything I've faced so far, it will all be surprisingly manageable compared to X-Pempti, which is what I'm most afraid of at the moment. If it's a normal Pempti operation where they just cranked up the patient's sensitivity (wounds do even more damage over time than usual, etc.) then I might be okay. If they did anything to Pempti's reaction time (as in how much time you have from when a mini-core appears until it makes its move, like the laceration ones' laceration dives and the tumor ones' tumor waves) at all, then it will be completely impossible.