Customer
Reviews
Is there a doctor in the house?
Theme Hospital, released in
1997 by Bullfrog, is a relatively simple but addictively fun game that
truly stands the test of time. It puts you in complete control of a
series of hospitals, working your way up from one larger institution to
another. The job gets harder as you move up the ladder, as greater
crises and burdens lie in wait to bring you down. It all starts fairly
simple. At your first hospital, you just need to set up a general
practitioner's office or two, a general diagnostics room, a pharmacy, a
psychiatric office, and get your researchers working on new diseases and
ways to go about combating them. You've got to hire doctors, nurses,
handymen, and a receptionist - and you get a wide range of folks to
choose from. Will you pay top dollar for the efficient GP's and
specialists, or will you settle for abrasive, lazy types who smell of
cabbage? Cure enough patients, make enough money, and establish a good
enough reputation, and job offers for bigger and better assignments will
come your way.
As you progress, you'll get access to an
assortment of fancy diagnostic equipment and treatment clinics. For
those hard-to-diagnose cases, there are X-ray rooms, cardiology exams,
high-dollar scanners, and the like, and before long you're even ready to
build an operating theater and put scalpels in the hands of those crazy
doctors of yours. As for the diseases and conditions, they aren't your
typical fare: alongside gastrointestinal-type ailments such as the
squibs, you have folks with Elvis Complex (who do indeed show up in
Elvis leisure suits), invisibility, Bloaty Head (just pop their head and
reinflate it), Slack Tongue (chop chop), Baldness (wait'll you see how
to cure that), and an assortment of silly afflictions. Of course, you
have your basic fractures and uncommon cold cases, as well. Each
condition is more funny than serious (especially in terms of how it is
contracted), but keeping your hospital up and working efficiently gets
to be pretty serious when you've got patients queued up in the aisles,
tired doctors recuperating in the staff lounge, diagnostic machines
temporarily down for repair, emergencies bringing in a number of new
patients who must be cured quickly if your reputation isn't to suffer,
earthquakes shaking things up, and epidemics popping up and wreaking
havoc. Patients can be pretty messy, as many of them tend to throw up
all over the place. If you don't have enough dependable handymen around
to clean up the mess, the Ministry of Health will be all over you.
The
graphics look surprisingly good even today - although 1997 graphics
certainly don't compare to those of recent games. There is a decent
variety of looks among patients, and it's almost worth killing a few of
them just to watch them ascend to heaven (or, on occasion, drop through
the floor on their way to an alternate destination). The game is simple
enough for anyone to play and enjoy, although things get pretty
challenging as you progress deeper into the game. A lot of games today
sacrifice fancy graphics for actual gameplay, but Theme Hospital is the
kind of game you enjoy playing years and years after its release.
Micromanagement fun!
This is a pretty old game, so
you probably won't be impressed with the graphics. I played this about
10 years ago and still love it.
Basically you manage a hospital.
You are responsible for building different types of rooms, hiring
nurses/doctors/handymen/receptionists, and control your in and outflow
of money.
I'm not sure how many levels there are since I've never
beaten the game, but there seem to be plenty. In order to move onto the
next level you will have to meet the goal of curing a certain number of
patients, maintaining your popularity, and earning a certain amount of
money. Sometimes the game throws in curve balls in the harder levels
such as epidemics.
I cannot think of what other game this game is
similar to, but if you like micromanagement and challenges, then you
should probably give this a try. But don't forget, this is a pretty old
game so you may not have the control and graphics of today!
Is there a cure for game addiction?
Let me start by stating that I
am an Atari 2600 girl who does not normally like the games of "today"
because I find them too complicated and too time-consuming to figure
out. That is, until I found this game. For some reason, I was attracted
to the title. It sounded like a fun game. When I started playing it, I
found it to be not only fun but very easy to learn and quite addictive!
All you use is a mouse and you can build your hospital the way you want
(including restrooms, staff room complete with pool table and arcade
game, soda machines, etc.), hire staff, purchase property for more
rooms, etc. The higher the level you get, the more neat stuff you can
build (scanners, x-ray room, operating theatre, even a hair restoration
clinic) and the more obstacles you face (earthquakes, emergencies,
epidemics, etc.). There are so many things to control in this game from
making sure each staff member is in the proper place to shooting rats
that roam your hospital. Sometimes a stomach virus will spread in the
hospital and you have to hurry maintenance men to clean up the vomit
(the sound effects are also a hoot). The game even keeps stats like how
many times a bench or soda machine is used so you can rearrange your
hospital more efficiently. The ailments patients suffer are hilarious:
things like slack tongue, spare ribs, and bloaty head. My favorite is
King's Syndrome where patients come in dressed as Elvis and have to see a
psychiatrist. Once they take off their Elvis outfits, they're cured! I
find myself playing this game for hours! My only criticism is that it
freezes up in later levels and sometimes patients get stuck in doors
which makes a diagnosis or treatment room useless and you keep having to
drag your doctors out of there. Theme Hospital is definitely worth the
money, but you can also buy this game as part of the "Top Ten Blue" pack
for less.
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