Theme Hospital

GOG just read my mind. I was reminiscing about this gem the other day with my friends. That wierd sense of humor, that management, that EMERGENCY. Could be a "you had to be there" kind of thing, but all of us "who were there" know perfectly how fun this game was. Nice graphics, catchy music, and hours of game ahead. Completely recommended.

I have played so many hours to this game back when it was released that it is difficult for me to stay objective, but I must say that I decided to complete it once again and enjoyed it, though the repetitiveness of the game has become irritating in an era where games are short and must always be "refreshing". On the pro's side: - Graphics are stil relevant, funny, dynamic. It's a pleasure to look at your hospital, even with the repetitive sprites - This game strikes a good balance between micro-managing and planning - The game is quite easy, which allows you to be "creative" in your way of solving issues, and have fun designing an hosital that you like instead of trying to maximize efficiency On the con's side: - If most of the game breaking bugs that were present in the original release have been fixed, I have encounter a few of them, whcih can be frustrating when you need to restart an hospital on which you've already spend some hours - Let's be honest, the few last missions where no new mechanism/illness are introduced are a bit boring. Also, some missions last for way too long. In short, the game gets repetitive at some point. If you would rather play this game in a modern game engine and with way larger possibility to personalize your hospital, Two Point Hospitals is a great spiritual successor to this game. But honestly, you get about the same pleasure with this 166MB gem from 1997!

Having owned and played the original disc-version since 1997, I am so pleased to see it on GoG for a new generation or haven't played it before or for those who want a nostalgia rush. The game itself is perhaps one of THE best simulation, or "theme", games out there and could still come out trumps to the more modern and recent sim/business games due to its very simple design, eye-candy/bright visuals & graphics and a mixture of casual/deep micromanagement gameplay. This review wouldn't be worthwhile without a mention to Corsix-TH. The brilliant people of CorsixTH have kept the game alive by supporting it through various platforms, adjusting the game to run on any resolution, fix an array of bugs and issues and overhaul the gameplay mechanics while still keeping the true Bullfrog-Theme Hospital elements. I have high hopes for the future of this awesome game, especially now that CorsixTH has reached a pinnacle stage in development (time of this review, it's version release is 0.10). While CorsixTH still have various elements to re-add due to the overhaul (Epidemics and Rats being the main), the core game remains untouched yet updated.

Theme Hospital is the first and best hospital builder sim ever made. There have been others that have tried to re-do this game and they've all failed. The humour, simplicity and flow are just top-notch. Modern game devs could take note of how this game is built and how it plays. I'd happily pay $5 for games like this WITHOUT any in game purchases on my phone or PC.

Classic from childhood. I like very much all kind of management games and this is not an exception. Humoristic ways to cure patients and most imaginable diseases merged with the hardship of trying to manage a hospital with ever growing flood of patients and their needs. And trying to keep the hospital running smoothly and profitable. But as the game progress, starts the repeat. Every new mission must be started from the scratch and every level has ever increasing victory conditions. Starting from the scratch isn't so bad, but the victory conditions just blow out of proportion. Later missions are, after you have made your hospital fully functional, mostly just waiting for the victory conditions to fulfill. It is not fun anymore when you have to just sit and wait to gain enough money before you can advance to the next mission. So the game is really good to the point, where everything is fully built and going smoothly. Good game and a classic. Just needs more variations to the victory conditions.