Theme Hospital

Game is very laggy, and hard to deal with. I have Windows 8 which apparently works with it.... but it really doesn't. Fix or assist please?

I finally finished this game after I don't even know how many years. I don't remember when I first played it, but it was a long time ago. I played it twice and didn't get further than two thirds. When I found it on GOG, it was instant buy. I played it again and didn't get too far before I once again stopped and changed computers. This time I promised myself I will finish it and I finally did. Although this game is still as I remember it and enjoy it, it still has some issues that are annoying. The constant need to click on each equipment and then make the janitor repair it every few minutes was exhausting and not really fun while also dealing with emergency or outbreak. While dealing with that, some of the equipment nearly exploded from usage. I still love the graphics, even though it's now too old. I played without music and sounds as the constant annoucements were grating my nerves. But I can always remember the tone and voice of the announcer and won't forget it. This game is fun but also repetitive, basically in each level you have to built the same equipment, train some newbies and repair everything after an earthquake. It may sound like I don't like this game, but I hold a special place in my heart for it and I can see myself playing it once again few years down the road.

There is no need for pretense here. This is a wonderful game, but it is just another simulation in a specific environment. You build a hospital/city/tower/theme park/safari/etc. Not that the genre is bad, just this game isn't that groundbreaking, IMO. It may certainly be the first application of this particular environment, but that doesn't make it fantastic, just different. By all means, it's worth playing once, but don't stay up in the night wondering what you've missed. It's another sim game, with it's own unique quirks. You would be better spending your time with a more recent sim that allows for greater flexibility in individual play styles. Final Word: Demo first, Buy later

This game is excellent, the gameplay is in-depth with lots of possibilities. I highly recommend it. You should also get CosixTH: https://github.com/CorsixTH/CorsixTH, because this makes Theme Hospital even better!

Excellent simulator that manages to scratch the same addictive itch as in RollerCoaster Tycoon; that sensation of building a hospital from a tiny set of rooms to a thriving, several-hundred-thousand dollar mega-hospital is something few sims are able to achieve. The game is just complex enough to be rewarding and to always give you something to do or think about, but rarely overwhelming. The experience, however, is marred by some serious problems that become especially frustrating in late game: - Bugs, bugs, bugs; most of the time the only way to solve them is to load an earlier save. At one point, a consultant-grade surgeon disappeared into a limbo outside of the boundaries of the map somehow and I couldn't pick him up. If you send someone to the autopsy room from the GP's Office, the door will suddenly disappear, rendering the room unusable. - Horrific pathfinding / AI. Remember how bad handymen were in RCT? Well, they've got nothing on these guys, who will happily walk through entire fields of vomit & trash. Late-game requires you to micromanage armies of handymen and surgeons, who have a strange habit of going walkabout when emergency queues are forming at the Operating Rooms. - The epidemic mechanic makes no sense and seems totally random - sometimes, you'll instantly run out of time to inoculate people even when no one has gone home; sometimes, you'll have a massive epidemic and the health inspector won't even notice it; sometimes, your health inspector will detect an infected patient clear on the other side of the map. Sometimes, it makes you want to hurl your computer out of a window. In summary, you'll more than get your money's worth from this by the time you start to get annoyed. I'd recommend playing RollerCoaster Tycoon first before tackling this. I should also note there's an open-source implementation called CorsixTH that might fix some of the bugs, but I never got a chance to try it out.