Theme Hospital

The Good
This game is really well balanced to be just challenging enough. It's a great casual game. I've reinstalled and restarted this game several times over the last decade and never quite put in the hours to make it to the very end before the end of the life of that particular PC, but its lasting appeal always has me coming back for another go.

The Bad
There are a few glitches. There's little more frustrating than nearing the end of a level to have the whole thing crash out because a little person has merged with a door. Doesn't happen often though, what with all these fangled modern patches.

The Bottom Line
A cheeky, tightly designed and extremely well executed management sim. I'm not mad on this genre but this one, though a little dated, stands the test of time in replay value.

Well worth five quid... though due to mine being plenty played over the years, I think I'm onto my third copy now.

The Good
At the beginning, to me, Theme Hospital was looking and did sound great in every aspect and I liked it very much indeed. Never been so easy and so much fun to build and run a hospital. All went right a little bit more until I couldn't manage to run my hospital in one of the levels of the game. Everything went crazy, my patients no more wanted to be patient: EPIDEMIC was covering every part of my building. People were vomiting, dying everywhere and I couldn't help them, I was the only responsible person for that chaos. It all started like a game but it didn't end like that. Game's funny? I remember the fake quarrel between Joe Pesci and Ray Liotta in Matin Scorsese's Goodfellas originated from a word, a world only, "FUNNY ha?" But before that memory I was deeply shocked when I thought Lars von Trier's movie, epidemic, its unexpected end, where epidemic's harmful touches had effected everybody, even our precious heroes: I think I will never forget "that" scream of the woman...

The Bad
If it is a Bullfrog game, I will expect repetitive gameplay. Unfortunately, Theme Hospital is forming no exception.

The Bottom Line
I know, anyone who played or will play this game can't be as clumsy as I am and I don't expect them to live the same emotions, maybe I am just exaggerating. Anyway, for me, Theme Hospital is a rare piece of art, definitely the best "hospital" simulation!

The Good
A lot of people find the sound and music for this game irritating. Personally, I love it, from the "Essex girl" accent of the receptionist's announcements to the incredibly catchy music (my personal favourites being "On the Mend" and "Fortune"). The graphics were crisp, bright and a good example of what pixel art could still do in a game even in the 3D era. The humour was spot on, too.

The Bad
This may just be me not being very good at the game, but I found the learning curve to be somewhat steep, and I was pretty much done for after about six levels (the level where Baldness is introduced was my eventual stumbling block, although I had serious difficulty before that).

The reason I stopped playing though was because the game began crashing on me, and eventually ceased to load. A shame, because I still enjoyed the game even though I was having a tough time of it.

The Bottom Line
A fun game with wonderfully retro sound and visuals and a wicked sense of humour, but watch out for the learning curve.