Hysteria Hospital: Emergency Ward Review

Written by: Steve Martin Posted: 27th August 2009

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Steve gets diagnosed with hysteria.

Hysteria Hospital: Emergency Ward Details:

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	Casual
	PC/Nintendo Wii/Nintendo DS
	GameInvest
	Oxygen

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Having already being unimpressed by the Wii version of Hysteria Hospital my very kind editor here at RealGamer has given me the unenviable task of reviewing the DS version of one of the worst games I've had the misfortune of playing. So will the DS version fair better then its Wii counterpart?

Hysteria Hospital: Emergency Ward on the DS is exactly the same as the Wii version I reviewed not so long ago, but the graphics have been downgraded and the control system is now taps and drags of the stylus instead of pointing and clicking with the remote. The gameplay remains the same they even recycle the same cut scenes at the start of the game, so in the spirit of repetition, my review will recycle descriptions of the game from my Wii review!

In the game you take control of a nurse and you have to help out at a struggling hospital for 9 days, each day lasts about 10 minutes, and you have to cure a certain number of patients inside the time limit to progress to the next day. It works like this, a patient comes in and sits down, you have to drag them and drop them off at the doctor’s room to get them diagnosed. Once diagnosis is complete, a thought bubble above their head shows the treatment required and so you drag them to wherever they need to be next, if you can’t cure their ailment a red cross is displayed and all you can do is shove them in an ambulance outside to go to another hospital. You then need to direct your nurse to the pharmacy counter to pick up the patients prescription, by clicking on the chart on the counter and take it to the patient by tapping on them, your character will then trundle off and complete the tasks you have appointed them to do. Occasionally they will also need medicine which is done in exactly the same way and you may need to tidy up some beds, which is done by tapping on the bed and then the laundry basket. You can queue tasks by tapping on the relevant objects and they will be done in turn. If a patient is ignored for too long they will leave, but cure a patient and you will receive funds, which can then be used to buy new equipment so you can cure more people, or put into salaries to speed up the staff or into maintenance so your equipment does not break down as often but this resource management is so simplistic it’s not worth paying any attention to it!

There is no variety in the gameplay and it soon gets very dull, if you’ve ever played Dinner Dash then this is exactly the same! It boils down to tapping and dragging constantly, and it never gets any better! It starts off ridiculously easy and the tutorial talks you through every step to begin with and points out exactly what you need on each stage. Once you have completed your 9 days at the first hospital, you move onto a busier or larger hospital. Once you get onto the levels where you have two floors, the game begins to get very tricky and no fun at all, as you can’t see what going on above or below you, so you have to constantly move between floors to check on your patients and make sure they are being catered for. To compensate for this they start giving you a coffee that you can drink at the pharmacy counter which speeds up your nurses movement but it is still irritating swapping between floors all the time. Other than that there’s very little to talk about, you can’t even customise your hospital as stuff can only go in certain places designated on screen.

The visuals are still pretty terrible, more GBA then DS if I’m honest, with little in character animation and identikit patients. The music is repetitive and uninspiring, a proper dull tune for a dull game! Thankfully the tannoy bloke has been removed from the Wii version, which has instantly made the game more bearable!

The DS version is probably slightly better than the Wii version, tapping and dragging seems more natural a control system and is more accurate most of the time, but this scaled down version still lacks any long term entertainment, the gameplay mechanic is constantly recycled and is thoroughly un-enjoyable in every way, kind of like a bad rash that keeps coming back!