Theme Hospital

This game is a perfect example of why I love GOG, an addictive game from yesteryear that stole many hours of my youth and is in my humble opinion, as good an example that I can think of, of a game that is just about having fun really. Theme Hospital, like may of the great games from Bullfrog, never takes itself seriously and in being foremost a game of fun, somehow always eclipses/ed (for me at least) any of the other theme styled genre games out there. The cartoon style graphics suit this game so well that I cannot imagine any cause to update them that would add anything to this gem. Equally so the cute audio effects. This is one game that in many ways still works today, because it had everything right to begin with. Well I should add that it was not (and is not still) without a few flaws, a few bugs here and there and at least for me when I originally played this, some interesting difficulty spikes. Still they never bothered me then and they still don't now - In fact this is one game I can just jump into and have fun without really taking too much notice of what I am supposed to be doing anway. Best of all though this is a game that if it were not for GOG, would have just remained a fond memory. Unlike some of the other fine pieces of gaming art available here, it is not a game I would have desperately hunted down and faffed about running on modern architecture, but it is a game I am glad to have back in my collection...for the times I just want to have some carefree gaming.

Let me put this out here first of all: I love this game. I played it when I was younger, I bought it some years ago, and now I bought it again on GOG so I could play it on my new machine. I still play it, it's still one of my favorite sim games. But it's dated. Very much so. The interface of the game is simple, intuitive and quick to learn, but it can and does often become a nuisance. Having to stop everything you're doing to rebuild a room just because you want to move a desk aside a block is irritating, to give an example. Another thing is the AI of the game, which is an extremely important aspect of it because of your incapacity to control everything at once, and yet is horrendous. Try to imagine The Sims where you have to control about 20 Sims at the same time without pausing. Handymen AI can really ruin the game for you in the latter levels. So the game is good. It's fun, and it's probably the best hospital/medical simulator ever made. But if you're new to it, or you're quickly frustrated, Theme Hospital is not for you.

Story time! This game was fantastic back in 1997 when it was released. I was visiting my Dad's house. In an attempt(successful at that) to impress his son he rarely got to see, he pulled out a zip disk 100 from a desk and plopped it into the zip drive. What did it have installed on it, asked nobody? Theme Hospital. I spent the better part of my 3 week visit playing this game. In hindsight that's kinda sad for my dad, but I didn't care, I was 13 and had an awesome game to play. My point is, if you have your 13 year old son visiting for a short while, probably best to find a game he will consume faster, because you wont see him again until it's time to take him to the airport.

One of the funniest games ever. 5-star indeed This game is a so fine jewel, that I wondered just yesterday why it wasn't on GoG's library. The graphics are nice and fit it to a 'T', the music is catchy, the gameplay easily hooks you in, the difficulty is not too easy neither too hard. There's also a very high replay value. But what really sells it is the humor. The jokes start flying around before you even set your foot on your first hospital - the intro video is so funny I actually LOL'd (more than once) watching it. In the game itself, the diseases are absurd and their description, symptoms and treatment are hilarious; there are all sort of little touches like diplomas in the end of the year for being the one hospital in the region that had the least fatalities or "that sold most drinks". When you use a cheat code the PA system announces that "the hospital administrator is a cheater". You have patients going into the psychiatrist room because they believe they're Elvis and dress as such, or going to the pharmacy because they're invisible (except for a hat, glasses, cane and a pair of shoes). But best of all, if your hospital stays dirty for some time you'll soon have rats running around. And you SHOOT them! That's right, you can FREAKING SHOOT rats! If that wasn't cool enough there's even a bonus level where all you do is shoot them with different weapons. How awesome is that?? One pet peeve I always had with this game is that somethings do not properly display their full effect, like putting a radiator would sometimes appear not to work because the staff still complained of being cold. I would never be sure how much the radiator actually helped. A few almost insignificant bugs also appeared from time to time - things like the cursor jumping when you enter some management screen or something like that. I don't really remember, because as I said it's too insignificant. All in all, if there's any slight chance you would ever like a management game, buy Theme Hospital. You won't even notice there's a flaw somewhere because you'll be too busy having fun.