.....Theme Hospital

......thats right you read the title correctly.  But why am I reviewing Theme Hospital?  Is it because I have no money and am about as rich as 'generic homeless man #2' in the film 'the road' (i'm not even going to give the film capitals it was that shit).  Or is it that there's nothing good out at the moment?  Well i'm writing this at a time when Batman Arkham City, Modern Warfare 3,  Battlefield 3 and Skyrim have been released.... or is it because i'm only a few lines into this and you already fucking despise me?  Its a combo of all three plus the sexy mysterious option number 4 that keeps suggestively winking at me from across the table; i'm a lazy bastard and it was the first game that came to hand.

"Don't Speak" by No Doubt, "Crash Into Me" by Dave Matthews Band, remember these absolute classic's?  ...nope neither do I but its the same year that brought you Theme Hospital; glorious 1997.  Better late than never I suppose, actually I always thought that was one hell of a bad saying it's like Hitler turning up at the French border in 1951, better late than never eh Frenchy?  Horrible thought, a bit like me trying to review any type of game.  With that being said the aim of the game is to kill every single human on the face of the planet, oh wait thats not the aim thats just how terrible I was at playing it.  The aim is to create, expand, upgrade,  improve, enhance, (enter other fancy words here) a hospital until you can bankrupt the NHS.  The more and more patients you 'cure' the better reputation you get resulting in the more money being pumped into your wallet for you to spend it on 50 thousand vending machine because what sick person doesn't enjoy Lucozade?  Oh and there's a board game element to it at the start and end of each level as a way of saying "Well done your death rate has plummeted you can advance to the next level!"  Thats only because everyone stopped coming to my fucking hospital it was like death row in there, the plants even lost the will to live and there was no janitor to water them he hung himself....  Plus who the hell would want to advance anyway?  They rip you away from your hospital that you just spent the last hour getting right to be dropped into what I can only guess is the world quietest village with all of two rooms at your disposal.  Come on Organic Sponge 'cure' more people will you, is what the game shouts at me even though it dropped me in the Sahara desert where i've only had 2 patients in the last 5 weeks and it was the same person returning because he lost his keys...

If you've noticed i've been putting the word cure in apostrophes, yes Theme Hospital gives you bigger and better equipment for you to spend your hard earned cash on but the methods of these machines relate back to medieval times!  Christ I would never want to stumble across my hospital; between popping peoples inflatable heads to making invisible people reappear, one does wonder how the hell they got into these situations.  That's the point of Theme Hospital it's light hearted fun, its not exactly going to turn round and say "You've been diagnosed with cancer, but our hospital is only at level 3 come back in 6 months if your still with us" and i'm glad it doesn't!  To be honest, the light hearted problems is what I believe are the real aim of the game; how many inflatable heads can you pop by the end of the level.  I got up to 63 before I was taken in for man slaughter....

But christ, if you thought I was bad God is the real villain in Theme Hospital.  Which leads me nicely on to equipment status, they made it so retards could understand it; 10 meaning: a brand new machine and 1 meaning: sweet jesus its gonna blow!  I say 'God is the real villain' as natures elements also have their part to play.  For example; a patient of mine entered my hospital (mistake number 1) and had to use the full body scan machine but having wasted all of my money on vending machines I had none left to fix the full body scan which was on setting 1.  As she entered the machine a rumbling and shaking started to occur with a message being displayed "Earthquake, number 8 on the Richter Scale"...... before I knew it there was a ghost with wings being lifted up to heaven.  Sure the machine was on its last legs but it wasn't her time god damn it!  She was married to one of my 30 odd janitors all watering plants (the place looked like a jungle, pretty sure a there was a tiger mauling patients somewhere in there) but why she went to heaven i'll never know I think she was having an affair with the physiatrist, seemed to spend a suspiciously large amount of time in his office and she only checked in with a high fever....

A worker never blames his tools but i'm not much of a worker and even though 'Blogger' will let me write until my hearts content I will lie and say theres a character limit because i'm tired and hungry and its 2011 why the fuck am I playing Theme Hospital!?  In closing i'll tell you why; because it truly is a masterpiece and a classic and you can pick up janitors and drop them in the toilets when someone is unleashing a monster.

Star Rating:
I always thought rating things out of stars was pointless so i'm going to rate this out of Cat Women; 4 Cat Women out of 5 (the Cat Woman I missed out was Eartha Kitt cause she's useless at crossing the road let alone fighting crime)

Email: original602@googlemail.com