Theme Hospital

The Good
A lot of people find the sound and music for this game irritating. Personally, I love it, from the "Essex girl" accent of the receptionist's announcements to the incredibly catchy music (my personal favourites being "On the Mend" and "Fortune"). The graphics were crisp, bright and a good example of what pixel art could still do in a game even in the 3D era. The humour was spot on, too.

The Bad
This may just be me not being very good at the game, but I found the learning curve to be somewhat steep, and I was pretty much done for after about six levels (the level where Baldness is introduced was my eventual stumbling block, although I had serious difficulty before that).

The reason I stopped playing though was because the game began crashing on me, and eventually ceased to load. A shame, because I still enjoyed the game even though I was having a tough time of it.

The Bottom Line
A fun game with wonderfully retro sound and visuals and a wicked sense of humour, but watch out for the learning curve.

The Good
This game is really well balanced to be just challenging enough. It's a great casual game. I've reinstalled and restarted this game several times over the last decade and never quite put in the hours to make it to the very end before the end of the life of that particular PC, but its lasting appeal always has me coming back for another go.

The Bad
There are a few glitches. There's little more frustrating than nearing the end of a level to have the whole thing crash out because a little person has merged with a door. Doesn't happen often though, what with all these fangled modern patches.

The Bottom Line
A cheeky, tightly designed and extremely well executed management sim. I'm not mad on this genre but this one, though a little dated, stands the test of time in replay value.

Well worth five quid... though due to mine being plenty played over the years, I think I'm onto my third copy now.

The Good
A lot. First, it's from Bullfrog - so I can't help but love it. The other reasons are a bit more serious, so let's go on:

• The graphics. Truly great graphics, quite detailed and extremely humourous (or insane, if you'd rather have it this way :-))
• Great music, diverse and actually likeable (though you'd probably want a wavetable card to play this, get an AWE32).
• Reasonably accurate simulation, not like in the half-assed, should-have-never-been-made Theme Park. If you do things right you do them right, and if you screw up you're screwed. That's the way things should be.
• Excellent gameplay and replayability value, with funny rooms and characters, "interesting" (to say the least) cinematic sequences.

The Bad
It's repetitive, definitely repetitive. Also, occasionally you'll find yourself earning profit, running an excellent hospital and still not moving to the next level - only to be promoted half an hour later. Go figure.

The Bottom Line
A really excellent simulation game I really love, however it's completely an issue of taste.