Interesting and unique game, difficulty practically kills any fun you'll have though. Besides that...it's boring.
Similarities end there though, Trauma center is it's own game for the most part. While the concept does sound fun and entertaining and it is, the games difficulty is so high the average gamer will be chucking their DS across the room.
If you can get past that though you'll find a lot to like. Performing operations can get pretty intense and when you fail (and you will fail) you'll almost feel like you screwed it up in reality.
My complaints besides the ridiculous difficulty levels are these: The characters in this game are downright annoying and what's worse is you're stuck with them for good. The writing in it while good just leaves sooo much to be desired. I personally didn't give a crap about the patients or the back stories of these characters one bit and in a game like this that is a fatal flaw. It also gets really repetitive really fast, being bored while playing a video game is unforgivable.
The story also goes a bit paranormal on you at one early point (I won't give anything away). But suffice it to say it just feels forced, an unnecessary plot development to say the least. It just kind of stunted the whole game for me as this is supposed to be a realistic game that places you in the shoes of a surgeon...what was the point there?
All said it's not a bad game but it needs quite a bit more polish to it. I've never played the Wii version but I imagine it's much better. I'd avoid the DS version.