Hysteria Hospital Review [Wii]



£26.98

£18.99

I'm a huge fan of Theme Hospital, so when I was given Hysteria Hospital for the Nintendo Wii I was pleasantly surprised to see an uncanny resemblance to the classic. How wrong I was. Oxygen Games has tried to breathe life into a Theme Hospital-esque game but has failed on almost every level.

Now people may think I am being harsh, however until you play this game you will not get the feeling of how mind numbingly boring this title is. Gameplay gets tedious very quickly and it doesn't help that it offers hardly anything new as you progress through the levels.

You play as a nurse and you're allowed to choose their gender and name.  And you're a fresh and newly graduated nurse just out of the University of California because, obviously, all nurses come from California. However after numerous rejections you are given a job in a lowly village practice. The goal is to rejuvenate the hospital's reputation as well as making money by curing as many patients as promptly as possible. Once all nine stars (yes nine why they didn't go with ten baffles me) have been achieved, you advance to the next hospital. And as you progress to better hospitals, you get more responsibility so that by the end of the game not only are you running the New York Emergency Centre; you have to tidy beds, maintain equipment (even though I've never seen a nurse with a spanner!), and grab patients charts and pills. The levels get busier with a variety of illnesses but normally the diagnosis is pretty much the same, and if you're stuck you can figure out their problem from an idea-like bubble that comes from their head.

At the beginning of each level you're tipped as to what kind of patients you can expect to see more of and their needs. One of the earlier hospitals levels had an influx of patients because of a marathon, so most of the patients would require bed rest. This is where the customisation aspect of the game comes into place. The whole concept allows you to buy and sell equipment for your hospital so you can be prepared for the next challenge put in front of you. Certain treatment items can only be placed in specific locations of the ward, this means you need to choose where to place items wisely. I prepared for the incoming haggle of tired patients by selling one of my general healing stations and purchasing more beds. However when the level played out I only used the beds twice and had in turn resulted in huge queues waiting for general healing. What's the point of giving tips for a level if they are not going to be implemented into the design?