N-Philes

DS REVIEW: Hysteria Hospital: Emergency Ward

Posted September 5th 2009 by Jacob Barnes.

Today we're going to take a look into the not-so-distant future. Before us lies a small, roofless hospital in rural Tennessee. Under Obama's new Islamo-socialist healthcare plan, there are now only seven hospitals in the U.S., and people soon flood the hospital lobby every few seconds. Our first patient has an ailment that requires a CAT scan, which is unfortunate because the hospital doesn't have enough funds to cover such equipment. We proceed to drag the patient back to the waiting room and tell her to go screw herself. It's not like it matters anyway; we only need to treat ten today to complete our shift. I bet you're wishing you listened to Glenn Beck when you had the chance.

Hysteria Hospital follows the story of one of two recent University of California graduates looking for a nursing job. After searching through countless help wanted ads, your nameless character finds a job at a hospital that quickly appoints you as a full-time nurse after a short phone conversation.

This game is not so much about the medical practices themselves as seen in Trauma Center, but instead focuses on time-management skills. Your job, controlling the nurse, is to treat as many patients as possible before your shift ends. This is done by tapping on your nurse's desired location in tandem with picking up patients like ragdolls and putting them where they want to go.

If you can get past the memorization of tasks and time-management, this is a surprisingly simple game. You'll know to drag a patient to the doctor when they pop up in the lobby. After putting them onto a bed or in a medical machine you then send your nurse to deliver a parcel of sorts to the patients, be it an IV bag or some bandages, and then you're usually done. The excitement, or hysteria for some players, happens when there is a backlog of too many patients. Sometimes you just have to throw some patients aside to meet your daily quota. For example, sometimes the x-ray machine will break down and it won't be worth the time to treat those who need x-rays.

To prevent instances like these from happening, you have some customization options before levels. In this area you can use the money earned from the hospital to upgrade certain attributes. To increase the chances of a machine not breaking down, just put some money into maintenance costs. You can also buy and sell equipment which you must then organize into the best location inside your small hospital space. It adds a little variety to what is normally a repetitious hospital shift.

Hysteria Hospital is a simple game. It's not to be considered a realistic medical simulation game by any means. For those who like situation management and multitasking, this can be a challenging game, at times. Others may be put off by performing menial tasks and dealing with the multitasking aspects.

Tags: Nintendo-DS, Hysteria Hospital

Posted in: Reviews, Gaming

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