| ThemeHospital | |||||||||||||||||
| Should you by Theme Hospital? |
Anyone who watches ER probably wouldn�t expect running a hospital to be a barrel of laughs. By the looks of things, the average hospital�s got crazed patients running around trying to murder ex-lovers, doctors with confusing arrays of surreal personal relationships, and all kinds of nasty dilemmas about what to do to people with life threatening injuries. But with Theme Hospital it�s time to leave behind nasty old reality. Bullfrog�s latest PC conversion puts you in charge of running a hospital in a cute alternative world where people suffer from �invisibility�, �TV personality syndrome�, and the dreaded �bloaty head� condition. What�s it all about then? Theme Hospital is the sequel to the popular strategy game Theme Park and continues Bullfrog�s Designer Series (which seems to have fizzled out a bit recently on the PC.) The basic aim of the game is to build and manage hospitals through a progressively harder series of levels. You kick off by placing a receptionist�s desk, seating, coke machines and so on. You�ll need some basic facilities such as toilets, a staff room, a training centre (to improve your doctors) and a research department to make more facilities available. Once you�ve got all these basic amenities sorted out, it�s time to set up some rooms actually dedicated to the practice of medicine.. | ||||||||||||||||
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Short funds? Then go to see the bank manager. The first thing you�re going to have to set up is a GP�s office. This is the most rudimentary of diagnostic areas and all patients have to visit it (so you�ll probably want more than one.) Other diagnostics areas become available as you progress into the game, such as x-rays, and these are essential to setting up a successful hospital as you won�t be curing many people if you don�t know what�s wrong with them! Once you�ve got the diagnostic side of things sorted out, you�re going to need some treatment areas. Rooms such as the pharmacy, ward, and operating theatre allow a number of complaints to be cured. More specialist rooms allow cures for more serious injuries. So, if you want to be able to cure bloaty heads you�re going to need a inflation room � the patient has his head burst and then reinflated to the correct size (before we have someone going off on a �video games ate my son�s brain campaign� I�d best point out that there�s no blood, �cute� is the name of the game with Theme Hospital.) | This looks good desent it? | ||||||||||||||||
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Setting up the rooms is fairly straightforward when you get to grips with the Playstation control system. It�s obviously not as easy with a pad as with a Playstation mouse, but the converters have done an admirable job of making the control system as useable as possible. Once the layout of your hospital is set up, you need to hire some staff. Staff members range in skills and pay demands. When selecting doctors it�s important to pick up at least one psychiatrist, one researcher and two surgeons. And that�s about it. Aside from having to get a good spread of doctors there�s not really all that much to hiring staff. Just employ the best ones available. They�ll occasionally demand pay rises, but unless you hideously overstaff your hospital this will not be a problem. This is a bit of a shame as the staff management side of things is fairly unchallenging. Once you�re hospital�s up and running you need to make sure all your machines are maintained, add improvements, deal with the odd emergency cases, and keep everything running smoothly. If you attain a certain level of wealth or reputation you can advance to the next level. To begin with, Theme Hospital is immensely engrossing. The first five or six levels really suck you in and keep you sat in front of the screen until you�ve built some excellent hospitals. However, once you�ve seen most of the things the game has to offer (by about level 6), Theme Hospital can become a bit on the repetitive side. Things get harder, generally through a greater volume of patients, but some of the tasks involved in running the hospital become a bit of a chore. This is true of most games of this nature, but compared to the likes of Sim City, Theme Hospital loses its appeal much quicker. Still, it is a lot of fun while it�s a fresh experience. No blood. No guts. Bit of Elvis though. Theme Hospital has made a pretty good graphical conversion from the PC. The Playstation version suffers from being in low-resolution and looks a bit weak in comparison to a decent PC running the high-resolution mode, but most of the animations have been retained and the game still has a very distinctive look. The hospital is depicted isometrically and there�s no 3D anywhere to be seen. This doesn�t really matter as Theme Hospital�s graphics are perfectly suitable for conveying its quirky humour. You can usually tell what�s wrong with patients as they move around the hospital, for example those with �King Syndrome� bear an uncanny resemblance to Elvis. | |||||||||||||||||
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