Rated: 90% (4 votes)
Loading ...Crazy ideas for games
garethogden
When the pile of Custom PC mail is slammed down on my desk the first thing we all do (although I usually beat the others to it) is to grab the jiffy bags. This isn’t because we all have a strange fetish for padded envelopes, but simply because the jiffy bags usually contain new games that have been mailed to us by publishers for the purposes of reviews.
Sometimes the games are great, such as Command & Conquer 3 and Lord of the Rings Online, and sometimes they’re extremely iffy, such as Poker Academy 2.0 (I must have missed Poker Academy 1.0 - oh woe is me…)
The latest dubious title to land on my desk is Hospital Tycoon from Codemasters, which sets you the challenge of managing the running a hospital, and has the snappy tagline ‘Stop a medical drama becoming a crisis’. The game has clearly been inspired by the success of hospital-based TV dramas, such as ER and Gray’s Anatomy, although it’s probably the brilliant Hospital drama-cum-sitcom Scrubs that is the main inspiration, since many of the in-game characters have ‘zany personalities’ and you can also help them ‘make friends’ and ‘fall in love’. It’s a bit like ‘ER’ meets ‘The Sims’.
I can see why Codemasters probably thought this was a good idea, but I can’t shake the feeling that it’s all in pretty poor taste. Hospitals aren’t entertaining places and certainly wouldn’t be my first choice as a setting for ‘a hilarious and engaging game.’
Perhaps I’m missing the point, or perhaps I simply don’t ‘get it’, so I should probably give the game a try to find out for myself if playing a ‘Medical-based soap opera’ is actually fun. The trouble is, every time I try to summon up the will to put the DVD in my optical drive to install it, I find myself involuntarily clicking on Medieval II - Total War instead. I should probably see a doctor about that…
I’ve given this game a go based on one thing alone. I loved Theme Hospital back in the day (I’m a rapidly ageing gamer!) To be honest a lot of the game play is a direct lift from said title, which in my eyes is no bad thing, last time I tried to install TH is caused me much agro and I had to give up 
HT’s inclusion of the ‘SIMS’ type gameplay does give it a new dynamic, but so far I’ve managed to pretty much ignore it and get on with the micro management.. sad isn’t it.
It does suffer from a major problem though. Each level is separated into it’s own ‘Episode’ tying it to the TV style play, however at the start of each episode you find the hospital returned to some preset layout, and not a continuation of your own developed.. erm.. development. Maybe I’ve missed the point on this score, and am trying to the play the game the wrong way, but a truly good game should allow you to!