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preview :: hospital tycoon
Hospital Tycoon
Reviewed on: PCAvailable on: PC
What makes Hospital Tycoon so great is the complete disregard for seriousness of any kind. It’s all about humour, having a laugh and at some point you try to run a hospital.
Addictions are commonplace nowadays. Smoking is always the first thing that pops to mind when the word is mentioned. Thankfully I’ve kicked that one but I still have a problem with caffeine (I’m down to four cups of coffee a day) and any game with the word Sim, Theme or Tycoon in its name. So when I opened up my mail the other day and found Preview 1 in big yellow and black letters across the face of a disc marked Hospital Tycoon, I breathed a sigh of relief. Getting game reviews done when there is a Sim, Theme or Tycoon game on my computer is like trying to keep Paris Hilton in jail. It’s only going to happen if a big angry man threatens me. Which in this case would be Yug but he’s half a continent away, so I’m safe. For now.
At first glance, Hospital Tycoon is, well, another run-of-the-mill Tycoon game. The graphics are so-so, they’d be more at home in the nineties but to be honest, I don’t care about that. Nor do I care about the music, which is classic MIDI game music. It WILL get stuck in your head and it WILL annoy the living suitcase out of you. But I don’t care about that either. What makes Hospital Tycoon so great is the complete disregard for seriousness of any kind. It’s all about humour, having a laugh and at some point you try to run a hospital. No classic medical cliché is left out. I honestly laughed out loud. Not just a ‘lol’ sort of laugh out loud but a full, proper ‘ROFLCOPTER’ chuckle. When I finally composed myself, I discovered the surgeons who use suction plungers in the operating theatre, the massive medical machines, people screaming in pain, syringes the size of the characters arms and you know you’ve hit the big time when you discover an affliction known as ‘Bad Ass’. Bad Ass is exactly what the name sounds like too. Your poor afflicted patients walk in the door bloated and making fart noises which are accompanied by a suspicious brown cloud and a force that is clearly so violent it causes them to stumble forward. The treatment for Bad Ass involves a diagnosis, samples are collected by a pathologist with a specialised Odour Testing machine and then the patient is taken to the mammoth De-Gassing machine. Of course you need to have all these facilities in place with the appropriate staff to operate them.
It’s very clear where the developer was trying to go with the style of the game. The characters move, express themselves, look and even speak in a fashion that is very, very similar to The Sims. This makes everything feel somewhat familiar. There is also a relationships system between hospital staff members that also seems to ape The Sims a bit but it does make for some very interesting chemistry between your staff members. I witnessed an all out brawl between a pathologist and a nurse at one point. Conversely my surgeon and a nurse were getting very close in terms of their relationship. Think ER, think Grays Anatomy, this is your very own hospital soap opera. You can make it play out however you choose too. Each staff member has a personality that is marked in terms of Laziness v Reliability and Meanness v Playfulness. You can move your staff around so that similar people are working in harmony near each other or you can have two people who are complete opposites working near each other so you can watch the sparks fly. This all has an impact on hospital performance. A harmonious hospital is an efficient hospital and a hospital that is in disarray is, well, nowhere.
The preview copy I received was, unfortunately, riddled with major bugs and some smaller strange glitches that should be sorted out before the final build goes gold.
My preview really only showcased little more than an hour’s game time so thus far it’s only a taste, but such a tantalising taste it is! Hospital Tycoon is shaping up to be a classic Tycoon game made in a mould that is one part Transport Tycoon, two parts The Sims, one part medical clichés and one part Gray’s Anatomy with a dash of ridiculous humour. To my mind that’s a fantastic mix and while the graphics and music may not be up to the latest high definition 7.1 standards, the execution is nothing short of fantastic.
There’s only one way to sum up my brief yet memorable preview; Laughter really is the best medicine.
At first glance, Hospital Tycoon is, well, another run-of-the-mill Tycoon game. The graphics are so-so, they’d be more at home in the nineties but to be honest, I don’t care about that. Nor do I care about the music, which is classic MIDI game music. It WILL get stuck in your head and it WILL annoy the living suitcase out of you. But I don’t care about that either. What makes Hospital Tycoon so great is the complete disregard for seriousness of any kind. It’s all about humour, having a laugh and at some point you try to run a hospital. No classic medical cliché is left out. I honestly laughed out loud. Not just a ‘lol’ sort of laugh out loud but a full, proper ‘ROFLCOPTER’ chuckle. When I finally composed myself, I discovered the surgeons who use suction plungers in the operating theatre, the massive medical machines, people screaming in pain, syringes the size of the characters arms and you know you’ve hit the big time when you discover an affliction known as ‘Bad Ass’. Bad Ass is exactly what the name sounds like too. Your poor afflicted patients walk in the door bloated and making fart noises which are accompanied by a suspicious brown cloud and a force that is clearly so violent it causes them to stumble forward. The treatment for Bad Ass involves a diagnosis, samples are collected by a pathologist with a specialised Odour Testing machine and then the patient is taken to the mammoth De-Gassing machine. Of course you need to have all these facilities in place with the appropriate staff to operate them.
It’s very clear where the developer was trying to go with the style of the game. The characters move, express themselves, look and even speak in a fashion that is very, very similar to The Sims. This makes everything feel somewhat familiar. There is also a relationships system between hospital staff members that also seems to ape The Sims a bit but it does make for some very interesting chemistry between your staff members. I witnessed an all out brawl between a pathologist and a nurse at one point. Conversely my surgeon and a nurse were getting very close in terms of their relationship. Think ER, think Grays Anatomy, this is your very own hospital soap opera. You can make it play out however you choose too. Each staff member has a personality that is marked in terms of Laziness v Reliability and Meanness v Playfulness. You can move your staff around so that similar people are working in harmony near each other or you can have two people who are complete opposites working near each other so you can watch the sparks fly. This all has an impact on hospital performance. A harmonious hospital is an efficient hospital and a hospital that is in disarray is, well, nowhere.
The preview copy I received was, unfortunately, riddled with major bugs and some smaller strange glitches that should be sorted out before the final build goes gold.
My preview really only showcased little more than an hour’s game time so thus far it’s only a taste, but such a tantalising taste it is! Hospital Tycoon is shaping up to be a classic Tycoon game made in a mould that is one part Transport Tycoon, two parts The Sims, one part medical clichés and one part Gray’s Anatomy with a dash of ridiculous humour. To my mind that’s a fantastic mix and while the graphics and music may not be up to the latest high definition 7.1 standards, the execution is nothing short of fantastic.
There’s only one way to sum up my brief yet memorable preview; Laughter really is the best medicine.