Hysteria Hospital: review

Ward’s This Then?

 

Format: Wii (version tested), DS, PC

ETA: Out Now

Publisher: Oxygen Games

Developer: GAMEINVEST

Players: 1

Web: www.oxygengames.net

 

 

 

 

 

 

There’s no getting away from it: at first glance, Hysteria Hospital seems to be a shameless clone of Bullfrog’s classic Theme Hospital. Similar graphics, camera, and basic premise of running a hospital as an omnipresent god. Start playing however, and the differences soon start piling up. But is that a good thing?

Amusingly, the game kicks off with an intro that attempts a story. A newly qualified nurse attempts to find a job, but what’s this? Letter after letter rejecting him/her (you can choose from a male or female nurse) on the grounds of inexperience. Just as this heart wrenching tale threatens to reduce you to tears, hooray – somewhere so desperate, they take the nurse on immediately!! Cue gameplay.

I’ve Got A Runny Nurse

The nurse you choose is, if you will allow us a temporary lapse into colloquial language, your bitch. He/she will run where you tell them, when you tell them, and will do nothing at all on their own initiative. Your nurse’s function is basically to deliver charts and medication to the right patients at the right time. The patients themselves will move only when arriving or leaving, which is where your role as God comes in. You pick them up with a disembodied hand (hygienically gloved, of course) and drop them where you want them. It’s always to reception first for diagnosis, then to wherever they need treatment. Each has a line of hearts above their head, indicating their happiness. Leave somebody waiting around for too long and they’ll leave, and you’ll incur a cash penalty.

As the game progresses, more and more treatments and machines are introduced; but at such a well judged pace, with tutorials we suggest you don’t skip, you never feel the game is unfair. Initially a patient will be diagnosed, dropped into the appropriate treatment, your nurse will take the patient’s chart over, then after a short while the patient will be cured. Later in the game however, many patients will require a few treatment methods in a row, each method requiring a new chart or medicine to be brought over; with new patients arriving all the time. Your bi – er, nurse will be running to and fro in such levels non stop until the time runs out.

Micro Management

As the game’s subtitle of Emergency Ward suggests, you won’t be running whole hospitals – just small, single screen wards (though later levels feature multiple floors). You’re therefore mainly concerned with the donkey work of delivering charts and medications, and moving patients around by divine intervention. There are business management elements, but they resemble running a business in the same way that building a tower of Duplo blocks resembles being an architect. You can buy and sell a small amount of machines and beds, and items to keep waiting patients happier for longer; and increase money used for machine maintenance (negating the need to repair them in the middle of a busy shift) and salaries (to make your staff work faster). It’s all incredibly basic however, and you’ll almost never run out of funds.

There’s one more thrilling element we haven’t mentioned yet…”coffee”. You’ll soon be able to pick up “coffee” from time to time, which temporarily sends your nurse zooming round so fast, we’re convinced there’s something more than caffeine in there. The “coffee” is picked up from the same counter as the charts…and the prescription drugs. Hmmm.

There’s something very important we’ve ignored until now: this is basically a variant on online flash and shockwave games such as Diner Dash and its various sequels and clones. Little effort has been put in to distinguish itself. There are the aforementioned simplistic management elements, but the graphics are lazy and a little fuzzy (on the Wii version we tested, at least), and the repetitive music and sound effects are best left turned right down, or off. The game doesn’t even remember what colour your nurse’s outfit is, should you choose to change it from the default. As for the humour…it’s more miss than hit, and the few good jokes there are start to lose their charm the 5552^nd time you see/hear them.

20mg Of Fun, Stat!

It’s a very easy game to criticise, especially if you’re expecting to pay the full RRP. But, dammit, it’s a very easy game to praise, too. It may retain the decidedly cheap feel of the games it apes, but it also retains their addictive nature. The simplicity gives it a pick up and play appeal for the casual and the hardcore alike, and when you fail a level because you needed to cure just one more patient, that ‘one more go’ feeling is as strong as you’d hope. There’s also an ‘Endless’ mode where you can’t speed up staff or prevent machines breaking down, that only ends when too many patients leave untreated.

Hysteria Hospital’s graphics, sound and gameplay are all so simple, the game arguably should have been released on WiiWare rather than as a full price retail release. If you hunt down a cut price copy online however then, even though the game doesn’t put up much of a fight until you get two thirds of the way through, you’ll find a gaming packet of rice cakes. Bland looking, bland tasting…but puzzlingly addictive.

 

7/10  

 

Luke Kemp