Powered by Bullfrog, EA has another commendable PC port on its hands. However, if you like strategy games like Command & Conquer and even Final Fantasy Tactics, you'd do well to give Theme Hospital a try. If you already have it for the PC, then there's no reason to pick this version up. If you like racing games and fighting games, you should stay away from Theme Hospital. Given the chance, it rewards your patience with consuming, deep gameplay. In fact, after you've become fairly proficient at this game, you'll find that the annual awards you're given, based on your performance, are almost always identical.ĭespite these drawbacks, Theme Hospital remains an incredibly addictive game. Each successive hospital pretty much recycles the challenge by giving you larger hospitals to maintain, with little difference from the preceding one. Sure, you're not facing hundreds of worlds as you did in Populous, but the couple dozen or so hospitals that you're charged with running go some distance to test your patience. Ultimately, the biggest drawback with games of this nature is in the lack of variety. Novice and seasoned players alike will find themselves navigating a substantial amount of menus, which eventually become intuitive but serve to boost the learning curve from the outset. Cramming a set of controls originally designed to take advantage of a full keyboard onto an eight-button joypad can be a tricky proposition. Another issue is the PlayStation controller. Coupled with a cursor that moves in one speed only, incredibly slow, maintaining your hospital can be a trying experience. Granted, you can adjust the game's speed however, that only compensates for so much. As you can imagine, with the incredibly large number of sprites hogging the PlayStation's processors, things are bound to slow down. Unlike the Sega Saturn or N64, the PlayStation does not have a dedicated sprite engine and therefore must render sprites in software. ![]() While the aesthetics are in place, the real attraction to Theme Hospital is in the gameplay, and it's here where things start to fray. Add to this a female announcer on a loudspeaker who constantly hails the doctors and nurses from one department to another, and you have a very immersive experience. Everything in Theme Hospital produces the sounds you'd expect: soda machines, treadmills, filing cabinets, video games, pool tables, toilets, men on toilets, X-ray machines, diagnostic computers, sliding doors, people throwing up - you name it, it's in there. The whole game comes to life as a result of the detail in the sound effects. Fortunately, the sound is just as stunning. Considering that the doctors, nurses, receptionists, janitors, and patients can number in the hundreds, each with its own distinct set of animations, it's hard to believe that it's the PlayStation moving all of these sprites. The graphics, while not as hi-res as you're likely to see on an RGB monitor, are clear and distinct. Originally designed for the PC, Theme Hospital has made the transition to the PlayStation relatively unscathed. Keeping up with the swarms of bizarre ailments that flood your hospital takes a good measure of reflexes and coordination, and while no one would ever confuse the two, Theme Hospital is as much a real-time strategy game as Command & Conquer ever was. ![]() Research the symptoms and develop the cures to succeed. Not just your average flu-pneumonia-tonsillitis kind of sick, but the bloaty head-uncommon cold-hairyitis-invisibility kind of sick. Unlike Populous, Theme Hospital doesn't have opposing armies burning down your settlements and pillaging your crops. ![]() Finish the job well, and you get to move on to another hospital for even bigger bucks. Your objective is to develop, design, and maintain a hospital that maximizes efficiency and keeps death rates low and profits high. Theme Hospital thrusts you into the role of a director/supervisor of a local hospital. Now Electronic Arts and Bullfrog have returned with the latest in the series: Theme Hospital. ![]() Years later, Bullfrog introduced Theme Park, a game that took the basic gameplay of Populous and put it under a microscope. It was a ruthless game that tested not only your wits, but your management ability as well. However, keeping your followers alive was no easy task, as there was always another deity attempting to do the very same thing, at your expense. In this game you would take the role of a deity and your goal was to develop a world capable of sustaining your followers. Once upon a time, a small development team named Bullfrog created what would become known as the god game.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |