The latest in a growing number of Nintendo DS hits to make the transition to the Wii (following the likes of Big Brain Training and Cooking Mama), Trauma Center: Second Opinion makes the most successful trip of all, bringing its unequalled challenge of performing operations on ill people to the bigger machine with some skill.

It's a single player experience, and you start as a nervous Doctor who at first has a few simple tutorial operations to perform. With each, you get a bit of background story first, with various characters popping in and out in a very old school way. Some may find this segment a bit irritating, but we sneakily warmed to it, feeling it lends the game a surprising charm.

Once through the assorted conversations it's into the operating theatre, where you'll need both the Wii controller and the Nunchuk attachment. With the Nunchuk, you then control the palette of operating tools, using it to quickly and intuitively select your implement of choice for the next part of the procedure in hand. This may be a scalpel, a syringe, perhaps a laser, or one of the occasional specific tools that the nurse makes available.

With your other hand you have the Wiimote, and through the motions and fire buttons on that, you perform the procedure proper. And it's astoundingly good fun. Even though that sounds wrong. Whether it's using a scalpel to haphazardly open up your next victi..., sorry, patient, or to stitch them back up, perhaps to use it to precisely hone in on a fiddly procedure, it's both tense and compulsive.

And it's the tension that's the key. For operations, you need to keep one eye on the clock and the other on the life signs of your patient. The intricate work you sometimes need to do becomes oh-so-trickier when you hear their heartrate dropping and it's amazing just how taut you find yourself getting.

In one or two ways, the touch-screen control of the DS take on the game has advantages over the Wii control system, yet they feel sufficiently different to make both games worth investing in. Trauma Center: Second Opinion may occasionally grate, and there'll be times you'll want to throw your virtual scalpel on the floor in a hissy fit, but you can't ever say it cheats you, and nor can you argue you don't get good value for your £40. One of the best Wii games of the year.

Some flaws and grumbles aside, this is inviting, compulsive and nerve-shredding entertainment, injected with a good old dose of urgency. Well worth your shekels.