kjorteo | Entries tagged with trauma center: under the knife 2

You know, having three stars on your profile is prettier than just having the one, I think.

What's that, you say? How do you get three stars?

It's easy, you just have to XS every single operation in the game.

WHICH I DID.

Let me put that another way: on top of the non-trivial difficulty of the main story, the X operations really aren't even meant to be done by humans, I don't think. Two of them (Tetarti and Nous) are okay, if not actually somewhat easy to pass if all you want to do is pass, but the jump in difficulty in terms of increased "whoops, damn it, restart" moments if you want to do it perfectly for the XS might be enough to violate the Geneva conventions. Two of them (Pempti and Aletheia) have a comparatively small jump between surviving and mastering, but that's only because even surviving is impossible--in other words, if you can beat them, you can XS them, but that's okay because you can't beat them. Three of them (Kyriaki, Bythos, Sige) are somewhere in the middle of that spectrum. I XSed all seven of them. And everything else in the game.

AAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

I realize I've been making an incessant string of UTK2 entries lately, but that's because I had to devote myself to that game to the exclusion of all others because of the inhuman skill jumps required. I still remember when chapter 1 was hard. By the time you're done with the X operations, you suddenly find yourself having skills that mere mortals do not have. I knew that wouldn't last, though. This really isn't the kind of game you can shelf for a while and then pick up later when you're rusty and expect to still have a chance against X-Aletheia. Basically, I had to master this game while I still could.

But now, it's over. Oh my God, I'm... I'm free. ;o;

( Post-game in-hindsight thoughts on the various GUILT strains )

Oh, that reminds me, I was going to do that walkthrough on XSing Mother of Sins, wasn't I?

( Doooooom )

And, with that, I guess I'm done covering Trauma Center: Under the Knife 2. That certainly was... something. :o Maybe I'll go back and finish up Etrian Odyssey 2 next....

Woo, Mother of Sins (Aletheia's non-X operation main-storyline appearance) XSed, meaning Aletheia has been added to the list of GUILT strains I have completely conquered (XS in every single appearance including X operation.) Only ~~Tetarti (XSed all main story appearances but not X2)~~ Edit: got it :o and Sige (haven't XSed anything having anything to do with Sige yet) remain.

When

davidn beat X7, he was sufficiently proud of what he had done that he explained his method in a sort of walkthrough format. Now that I have XSed it (and Mother of Sins) I completely understand that feeling--in fact, it may be stronger for me, as going for the XS requires some lateral thinking on the most time-efficient and least chain-breaking way to get through certain phases, and I'm actually somewhat proud of the solutions I came up with for some of them. Therefore, I'm going to put my methods down here.

( So you want to XS X7 (Aletheia) and Mother of Sins.... )

That was supposed to be a walkthrough for both, but it ended up being longer than I expected and I ran out of time (I need to get to bed) so it's only X7. I may talk about how I did Mother of Sins later.

For now, I'll just add that I also XSed X-Tetarti (how the hell did I do that D:) and cleaned out chapter 5 while I was at it. There are now only five operations left in the entire game that I haven't XSed--three in chapter 6, one in chapter 7 (a Sige one, so I'll save it until after X-Sige so I can do it while it seems comparatively easy) and X-Sige.

I... I'm so happy.. ;_;

Edit: ( A confession. )

Still can't beat X-Aletheia, but I'm making some progress, I think.

My previous sticking point was near the end of its second phase (after it summons Tetarti but before it summons Kyriaki.) Every walkthrough and video run and basically every source on this game ever all agree that phase two Kyriaki is pretty much unbeatable, and the answer is to have injected enough serum that you finish off its second phase after Tetarti so Kyriaki just never comes up. My problem before was that I could deal with all of the GUILT it threw at me (except phase two Kyriaki) but I just couldn't get large enough amounts of serum into it quickly enough.

I decided to practice injections for a while. I actually just started a random mission and kept injecting stabilizer before I even opened up the patient, just to get a feel for exactly how long it takes to completely fill an entire syringe and how long it takes to inject the whole thing again, and thus how the timing worked for how quickly I could inject one full serum of something. Interestingly, I thought that my problem was that it was taking too long to fill, but I found out that I was actually filling it just fine, but getting too excited and not holding the injecting phase long enough, panicking and cancelling the injection with about 25% of the serum still in the syringe. Oops.

Confident that I resolved the "I can deal with the GUILT but I can't inject serum fast enough" issue, I tried Aletheia again, and can now regularly (excluding occasional mistakes or bad luck in some of the other attacks) make it to phase three Bythos, where I suddenly have the exact opposite problem.

Trauma Center goals and statuses:

XS X-Tetarti: Fuck
XS X-Sige: Fuck
Beat X-Aletheia (at all): FUCK
Operation "Screw this, I'm just going to XS the entire rest of the game just so I can feel like I'm actually making some sort of progress somewhere on something": With the XSing of Hope Hospital (or as davidn puts it, X-Gallstones), Blackwell, and The Touch (thank God I already took care of A Rough Night earlier), I have now officially done chapters 1 through 4.

At this rate, I'm going to run out of game to distract me from the X operations some day, and then what am I going to do :(

This is actually starting to get a bit discouraging. Obviously I don't have to XS the entire game--all I really have to do is just beat X-Aletheia and (unless it pulls a Bythos and gives me a C or something) then I'll have at least made it all the way through the entire game including X operations with the A-or-above-on-Hard streak unbroken. Surely that's good enough, isn't it? I don't wanna be the Guy anymore :( However, just completing X7 in any form is actually one of the less possible of those four goals--while some of the operations have certainly been trickier than others, overall XSing the entire rest of the game has been comparatively easy so far. (Will that last all the way through chapter 7? Doubtful. But shh.)

Beat X-Sige, had to use Healing Touch because X-Sige is bullshit, got an A anyway.

For the remainder of the time I spent playing Trauma Center this evening, I had four options for things I could try work on:

Try to beat X-Aletheia, like, at all
Go back and XS X-Sige
Go back and XS X-Tetarti
Go back and XS every single operation in ~~chapter 2~~ edit: chapters 2 and 3 just for kicks, one of which includes Sinner, on which I had been stuck enough to seriously complain in the past.

Guess which three of these things are completely impossible and which one I did instead!

Man, I am embarrassed that I ever said anything about Sinner being hard. Or that I ever put that XS run video in the "clearly either tool-assisted or a cyborg from the future" pile--now I see it and think "eh, pros and cons compared to my own XS performance--he's a little faster with the membranes but I'm much better with the scalpel/suturing of the hemorrhages." (He did get 108 points more than me, but eh.) I said it was a strict time bonus? You need to do it in under 60 seconds for the bonus, and tonight I could have done it in under 30 if I had been in "crap, speed run the closing up and throw a bandage on him as fast as I can" mode rather than spending ten seconds just spamming stabilizer at the end to get more vital bonus. (My clear time is 00:32:51 after that.) Anything I can do in literally half the time it allows isn't strict. Fibrillation? That's just not something that even comes up when you do the operation in thirty seconds. Geez, that post would almost be shameful if it weren't so hilarious instead.

After XSing X1 and GUILT Returns (I already took care of Tragedy when I was doing Pempti), Kyriaki has been added to the "I have XSed every single operation in the game in which this GUILT appears, including its X operation" list! There are four of them now, and Kyriaki is now one of them. Neither of those are things I expected to happen when I started this game....

It occurs to me that if I can XS X2 (Tetarti) then that list would grow to five and I would have a perfect unbroken XS streak from X1 all the way through X5. But... man, X-Tetarti. Man. :( (Also, please don't make me try to extend that through X6-X7. I still haven't even beaten X6 at all....)

And just like that, BythoXS.

You know, Bythos, I would have been happy to have an A, but you just had to be like that. Why did you have to be like that? You brought this on yourself, Bythos.

And to prove this feud wasn't over, I went back to replay The Altar--a Bythos operation in the main story that was an absolute cake walk compared to the X mission, but the damned thing did it again when I beat it on my first try about two minutes before the cutoff for the time bonus but only amassed enough points during the operation itself for an S. So I saved the Healing Touch for the very last hit (instead of the last two hits) and a couple tries later (there is a bit of luck involved in Bythos core extraction, even when it's not an X mission) the XS was mine, meaning Bythos has been added to the pile of GUILT strains I have completely cleared with an XS on every single operation in the game in which it appears, including its X operation.

Bythostard.

(On the other hand, it's actually a bit alarming to think there is more than one GUILT strain--currently three as of this writing, actually--against which I have gotten an XS in every single one of its appearances including its X operation.)

Now, let's talk about X-Sige... or better yet, let's not. D:

Me: HA HA. X-Bythos defeated in a near-speedrun amount of time after an extraordinarily good run, made even faster by a Healing Touch to get the last two hits in. I never have to do this damned stage again!!

Game: Congratulations! Now calculating your score! Let's see here... you used the Healing Touch, and because of that you beat the last two phases too quickly for it to generate enough lacerations for the max chain bonus, so you miss both of those. On the other hand, No Misses, and you absolutely kicked the time bonus' ass--you needed 1:30 left, you beat it with 2:58. So with two out of the four bonuses, I pronounce you....

Me: OH BOY OH BOY :D

Game: Operation score: 9,438. Rank: Rookie Doctor (C)!

Me: :D ... :) ... :| ... :( What, but... but....

Game: Have fun with Sige! Well, assuming you're comfortable with letting your A-or-above streak die after having made it all the way through X4 and up to X5, anyway. You were so close! Of course, if not, you can always go back and try Bythos again.

Me: D: But....

Game: Hey, you just said you had way too much time left but not enough lacerations for the chain, right? Maybe you could do it without the Healing Touch. Hey, I'm pretty much describing an XS run at this point, huh? Well, I guess you'll have that to look forward to, then! Ha ha ha ha!! :D

Me:

NouXS!

Also A Rough Night while I was at it.

Yes, really.

X-Pempti?

MORE LIKE XS-PEMPTI

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

(and yes that means no Healing Touch, even when it went unstable)

... haaaaaaaaa *collapse*

X-Tetarti has been vanquished! X-Pempti... still hasn't.

The Under the Knife games like to give all the GUILT strains their own nicknames in the pre-operation briefing of the X missions, like it's suddenly a professional boxing/wrestling/MMA match of some sort. (Girard "The Dragon" Drake, etc.) In UTK1, X-Pempti was also known as "Armored Bacteria." In UTK2, it's "Rampaging Nightmare." Guess which one I consider more appropriate.

Originally, when I started playing Trauma Center 2, I decided I'd see how far I could go with a self-imposed "must get rank A or above on Hard" challenge. (That meant that A, S, and XS were okay, but C and B were unacceptable and I'd have to do the operation again until getting at least an A before I could move on.) I figured that the notoriously difficult Trauma Center series would laugh at this notion and that at some point I would hit the wall at which A on Hard was simply not possible for me. The only question was, how far would I make it? Could I at least beat all of chapter 1 before having to bump the difficulty down or start accepting Cs? Perhaps--dare I dream!--chapter 2?

So I set out just to try my luck....

...And, after defeating the storyline endboss and freaking X1 with an A [on Hrad] on each, the streak is still alive.

:O

And honestly, X1 wasn't even that bad. Going into it, I was never that afraid of UTK2 X-Kyriaki, because the way Kyriaki work now honestly makes them a lot easier once you understand how their behavior has changed compared to UTK1. UTK2 X1 ended up being hard but absolutely laughable compared to UTK1 X1, exactly as I predicted it would be. UTK1 X1 was an entirely different game than everything else up to that point. It was a fantastically sadistic "WELCOME TO THE X MISSIONS, PREPARE TO CRY" sudden brick wall of a freaking impossible level. UTK2 X2, by contrast, honestly wasn't even as hard as some of the main storyline missions I was stuck on for a while there!

I still don't want to say I'm in the clear as far as carrying the streak all the way through, though, because honestly, there are still X missions I have yet to do that absolutely terrify me just on principle. X-Kyriaki definitely wasn't the problem. The problem is that I still have to do X-Pempti at some point. I do not want to do X-Pempti. :(

Well, okay, I'm not particularly looking forward to X-Bythos, either.... or Sige... or really, any of them at all besides Kyriaki. Kyriaki was actually the one and only strain in the entire game for which I didn't fear the X mission upgrade. Even the thought of X-Tetarti or X-Nous (if give you less time to inject the serum/drain and excise or something) makes me more nervous than the thought of X-Kyriaki did this time. We'll see how it actually turns out, though!

Anyway, one problem with the main story's resolution.... This is mostly the fault of the game throwing so much completely unbelievable stuff at you and expecting you to operate your way out of it, but... thanks to that, Mercer's plot-death was really unconvincing. Dr. Stiles starts instinctively barking out orders about stopping the bleeding and getting ready to operate and such, only for Dr. Chase to basically say "forget it, man, he's gone; that bullet went right through the heart." Really, Tyler? Because I'm pretty sure I had to deal with someone who had been shot in the heart in the fourth operation in the game. (I XSed it.) I just beat Aletheia for God's sake, shut up and give me a scalpel. You know, there's something really wrong with the entire setting if the highest pinnacle of forbidden research--the absolute perfect epitome of all that is GUILT--is still less effective than bullets. oh, whatever.

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.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FtYYssbx4qY#t=4m05s

What is probably actually happening: The lead bad guy is speaking to a room full of minions (who are also conversing among each other,) but the artist couldn't be bothered to spring for more than one "generic Delphi minion" picture (with two expressions.)

What I like to imagine is happening: The lead bad guy is speaking to his right-hand man, Lieutenant Gollum.

Game: GUILT outbreak at Elysium!
Me: :O No one could have seen this coming! Okay, what am I up against?
Game: Kyriaki, and lots of it.
Me: Oh, okay. I've dealt with Kyriaki before lots in UTK1, and this is the first time it's appeared in this game, so I'm sure it'll be a simple neutered version comparable to UTK1's "Please Let Me Live" operation. No problem!
Game: By "lots of it" I meant there are four patients in one 10-minute operation.
Me: Oh, it's one of those operations. Well, uh, okay, so it's four Please Let Me Lives in a row. I can still handle that, as long as it doesn't pull something like have all the patients take crazy damage like this is suddenly an X mission or something.
Game: Funny you should mention that.
Me: ... :(

So, um... I guess... I guess I'll just keep trying, then.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L7Lz6A-cSg8#t=2m16s

"Excuse me, my good sir! I have long Marilyn Manson hair that's as pale and corpselike as my complexion, demonically possessed red glowy eyes of doom, and I'M WEARING A FREAKING DELPHI UNIFORM. Can you direct me to the main ward?"
"Why, certainly! You seem like a trustworthy enough sort. It's right over there."
"MWA HA HA HA HA HA!! I mean, thank you. I mean, both."
"What a delightful fellow!"

So Dr. Vaughn had a different look and a job at Elysium before the events of New Blood, I see. Not that Dr. Stiles and crew get away unscathed with their "well that was an interesting but undoubtedly irrelevant to anything scene... back to what we were talking about before, I suppose!" response, either, though.

SINNEEEERRRRRRRRRR

You know what would be awesome? Let's start with that mission from New Blood that Slither and I loved so much....you know, the "liver has a bunch of bleeding squares, draining a square makes it dry for about six seconds (I timed!), trying to put a patch on a non-dry square is a MISS and vital damage, patching a dry square and having the six seconds expire makes the patch fall off as it becomes bleeding again, and the only way past this is to get every single square simultaneously dry and patched and gelled before any of them reopen" one. Then, just to make it fun, let's make you do it twice so you have to be able to do at least one of them legitimately since you only get one Healing Touch per operation, add a bunch of hemorrhages that do obscene damage when cut (which is how you are supposed to treat them) the second time, and throw in in random toxicosis and fibrillation!!

Oh, and naturally, all the special operation bonuses are for things like not letting the patches fall off or letting the patient go into fibrillation too many times or things I totally have complete control over like that.

Amazingly, my "get an A on everything on Hard" quest has still not been derailed, even by this. (I even got an S on the corrosive-poison-in-the-throat one right before this, but getting an A on Sinner is actually more impressive to me.) I want to say that if getting an A on Sinner (which was more or less a luck-based mission) didn't stop me then nothing will at this point, but I am fully aware of the folly of saying things like that when I still haven't seen the sentient zombie cancer still arise to do one-on-one scalpel swordfighting with me in the middle of an operation yet.

Edit: Okay, so, in this XS run (which I would suspect of being tool-assisted were he not visibly filming a DS and stylus in real life, so instead I'll suspect him of being a Terminator or some sort of robot from the future like that,) it turns out the special bonuses are standard no misses/max chain/do it obscenely fast plus not letting patches fall off, nothing about fibrillation. On the other hand, that's such a strict time bonus and fibrillation takes so long to resolve that there's pretty much no way to get it if it happens at all anyway.

I have just completed the second mission of Trauma Center: UTK2, but I know the game hasn't really even started yet. (How do I know? Because all I'm treating so far are semi-almost believable injuries and such, with only things like my miracle gel blatantly defying the current laws of medicine. Trauma Center games don't get serious until the afflictions catch up in the arms race and you start running across the sentient zombie cancer and such.)

I've already fallen in love with the quality of life improvements in the way the game is handled between the actual operations, mostly the way it adopts the innovations from the Wii games of presenting each chapter as a list and letting you go back and replay them individually before beating the entire rest of the game (although time will tell whether the "even if it's not XS++ or anything, I should at least get rank A before I feel right going on to the next chapter" senses will drive me insane,) and actually telling you what some of the specific prerequisites are in the otherwise nebulous special bonus field. (Though, with two missions completed so far, the only two items I've seen so far are No Misses and Max Chain 40+.) I'm a bit worried that it actually has selectable difficulty levels, though. Naturally, I'm playing a Trauma Center game on Hard because I secretly hate myself.

On the other hand, I had grown so used to the absolutely omnipresent Caduceus USA ~~Dance Club Mix~~ Main Theme that it actually feels really weird to have not heard it (yet?)

What is it with the Trauma Center series and doctors that act like complete doofuses while they're still newbies? Oh, well, at least they usually grow out of it, except when they don't (cough cough Marcus Vaughn cough.)

Anyway, seems pretty cool so far!

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Entries tagged with trauma center: under the knife 2

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