Be In Control! (Theme Hospital (PC))

Member Name: queenofsheba

Product:	Theme Hospital (PC)
Date:	05/08/01 (104 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Great Fun

Disadvantages: Can take up a lot of time

Did you ever want to chop someone's tongue off because it was so slack that they never stop gossiping? or stick a big pin into somebody's large inflated head because they were so in love with themselves? Well now's your chance with this game. Read on and you will find out more.



The Object Of The Game
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It's basically a management game. You have to build and furnish a hospital, employ all the staff and keep it all running smoothly all within a fairly tight budget. There are several levels and in each one you have to build up a good reputation by curing a certain amount of people and keep the number of deaths to an absolute minimum.


Setting Up
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Furnishing your hospital is quite easy to start with as, on the first level your target isn't quite so high and so you can get the feel of the game very quickly. Be as detailed as you can when furnishing the treatment rooms and corridors as complaints from the staff and patients will soon flood in if you don't have enough heating, toilet facilities, chairs to sit on or drinks machines etc. Each piece of furniture/equipment costs you money so you need to watch your spending until you have cured a few patients and got some money back in.


Employing the staff.
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You can really have some fun when employing the doctors nurses handymen and receptionists. Each available candidate has their own file, which tells you little bit about them such as how skilled they are, their efficiency, and what wage they require. You also get little hints on their personality quirks. For instance they can be sly cunning and subversive, or always have a smile for everyone, or perhaps they even hollow out vegetables to use as soap holders! Some even have it on file that they are very, very lazy,or maybe have a real attitude problem, so take care that you employ good doctors or you may have a lot of dead patients an
d your reputation in the community will go down rapidly. Staff available are doctors/surgeons/psychiatrists, nurses, handymen and receptionists. You must employ a receptionist very quickly as without her you won't get any patient appointments at all! She will also tell you when there are emergency patients coming in and what they are suffering so that you can organise your staff very quickly.You can change the priorities of the Handymen to to make them clean up or maintain machinery more efficiently.

If your hospital gets too dirty you will soon be infested with vermin which you will see running around quite freely.Your cusor can be used as a shotgun to shoot them!

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Keeping an Eye on your Progress
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You get tables and charts to look at so that you can check your progress to see how you are doing, this will help you to make any changes you think necessary and keep an eye on how happy your staff are. You can give your staff a pay rise to keep them happy if you value them or sack them if you think they aren't up to the job. You can control the heating from here too and see how happy people in the hospital are in general. These charts sit on the bottom of the screen all through the game, just click on them to open them up. Every now and then a doctor or a little computer screen will pop up to alert you if there is something you should know about like a member of staff who is losing the plot and about to walk out, or a V.I.P. requesting a visit, so that should also help you to keep tabs on the goings on.

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V.I.P Visits.
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You get V.I.P visitors throughout the levels too. They take a walk around the hospital to check that all is in order, so you have to make sure everything is up to scratch or your reputation among the community will be damaged and you may well
get shutdown. Make sure you have enough handymen to clean up the hospital and repair all the equipment (which will blow up if you are not careful) and help to keep everything running smoothly. If he likes what he sees you will get some bonus money to add to the hospital account and your reputation goes up.

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Ailments.
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You will find all sorts of funny complaints like Bloaty head, Slack Tongue, Baldy Head, The Kings' Syndrome, (people thinking they are Elvis) Spare Ribs and Kidney Beans. You have to try and diagnose and successfully treat every single one and keep the death rate as low as you possibly can. As you progress through each level, a new illness is discovered and your research department will have to try and find the cure. Like in real life, patients can die while this is happening in your hospital unfortunately.Keep your eye open for the Grim Reaper who comes to take away the dead,its quite funny especially when you here the blood curdling screams of the victims.

Sometimes you will get a stream of emergency patients who have to cured within a time limit and you can choose whether to accept the challenge or not. You get extra money for every one that you cure, but each one that you don't cure will die and so again you are risking that all-important reputation.


This game is very good fun indeed, but time can slip away from you very easily when you are playing. I thought one time that I had only been playing for about an hour but on looking at the clock I soon discovered it had actually been five hours!

My game came along free with my computer but I have seen it in Dixon's for about £15.It think it is well worth that amount as I have had hours of fun with it already.

I didn't actually get any written instructions or guides to help me with playing this, but you don't really need them as there is a fair bit of hand-hol
ding as you go along the first level and by the time you have that one in the bag you know what to do for the rest of the game.

Hope you found that helpful, enjoy!

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