Others say...

"Something improved but not revolutionary"
I've been playing HT on a gaming site and I was at first hesitant to play it. I saw all the negative reviews on many gaming sites. I must say it's not all that bad but it's all not that good also. I would give it 2 1/2 stars if I could. It's partly a recycled Theme Hospital by Bullfrog mixed in with some new stuff. The graphics are nice and the gameplay is decent but it wont keep you playing for many hours and it will quickly bore you. TH kept me busy for days and hours at a time.I recently reloaded it onto my computer. On an Intel Core2Duo sadly the game flies by lol.
Something good: The tutorial is excellent. If you didnt read the instruction manual, the tutorial is great for learning how to use the menus, building rooms, adding furniture, hiring staff, and knowing the ins and outs of the game.
HT's main theme is to build up a working hospital that you can make a profit while keeping your staff happy with each other. The 4 hospitals Codemasters mentions seems like no effort was put into this. They are the same hospitals but different colors. The diagnoses that you are faced are supposed to be comical and in a way they are. The machines in this game are very nice graphically and work nicely. In other words: they fit. Instead of making the room, you are given several choices to build prefitted rooms of different sizes. Not bad. I didn't miss the way rooms were created in Theme Hospital. Most of the rooms have a changing room and a desk preinstalled. You can add pictures, plants, clocks and wall hangings. The diseases are different and somewhat funny. The equipment to diagnose and treat are different and very detailed. There is a machine from Theme Hospital such as the X-ray machine that is in Hospital Tycoon. The wierd thing is if you have a popular and highly rated hospital, not many people come to your hospital. If you have a large staff they are going to be relaxing and its your dime! I counted 9 people in my hospital waiting to be treated and it got very boring. I remember in TH when I had a popular hospital, it was filled and was causing bottlenecks on my old Compaq at that time. The peeps are nice (not perfect but nice). Some of the routes they take is questionable. When you click on a person you can actually look from their point of view, follow them, and find out their vital statistics. You can also jumpt to first person point of view with your staff. It's a nice change.
What disapoints me is the fact that this could of been a teriffic tycoon game (many have failed with the name of tycoon). Sadly the bugs stated in previous reviews and the attempt to model the game after Theme Hospital with better graphics and somewhat different gameplay gets a grade in my mind: D. It could of reached for the stars (or should I say beds) and be a hit but it doesnt. The camera zooming needs to be reworked. You cant zoom out to far but you can zoom in pretty close. I would of liked to see a Trama and ICU wing, a parking lot, underground parking lot, and the allowance of creating wings within your hospital. For example: heart, foot, trauma, neonatal, and more. How about changing the uniforms of the staff. I liked it when you click on the staff, their picture ID card shows up but there is nothing you can do with it. Adding card entry zones would make the id cards usefull.
Unfortunatly, as I said before the game is more of a recycled Theme Hospital. If Theme Hospital had better graphics then yes, TH would destroy Hospital Tycoon. HT fails (but not a failure as E.R. the game)to living up to the hype and what Codemasters was marketing. HT has better graphics but the gameplay doesnt make you play it for hours. It would be nice if there were multiple floors including elevators (perhaps elevator banks that we are use to in real hospitals), hiring security, and performing real operations. I miss the game Life and Death where you treated patients and opperated on them if need be. No other game has ventured into what Life and Death did. Performing operations would of been a good addition to HT. The addition of shops and coffee shops could of been neat. Also instead of using comical sicknesses and diseases, why not put real life situations in it. Ive never seen IV's, oxygen masks, and syringes for blood tests. Has anyone ever been to the hospital and see the police bring in suspects? It would be great to see a baby wing in the hospital, heart disease center, ect. Make your hospital a specialty center. How about working in your own hospital but working up the ladder starting as a rookie nurse/intern doctor to resident, surgeon, chief surgeon, chief doctor. The game woudlnt end but at the top you would be relied on for purchasing supplies, balancing the budget, hiring and firing, making decisions, ect.
Part of me is tired of seeing comical diseases and illnesses but thats just my opinion. I love simulation style games and really pinpoint how a simulation style game should or could be.
In conlusion, Hospital Tycoon seems more like a 2007 version of Theme Hospital but with better graphics. For me, I would own both. But I certainly wouldnt pay $29.99 for Hospital Tycoon. I will wait till it goes down to $9.99. I think I paid $19.99 for Theme Hospital more than 10 years ago. If more NEW content and expanded then $29.99 price would be justified. So Ive been playing it free online.
All and all its an ok game but doesnt add much fromm Theme Hospital which was a big hit more than 10 years ago and still has a loyal following (Im one of them). When I first saw the pictures and read the previews of HT, I was excited to see that Theme Hospital got an update and looking for it to make a splash and go off on its own tangent. I was dissapointed. Hopefully the makers of HT will listen to the reviews and improve it. It's a decent foundation but it could be better. If you have Theme Hospital, dust off the cobwebbs and reinstall it. This game will make you do it. I'd wait for the price on HT to go down to $9.99 but hopefully a Hospital Tycoon 2 will be announced. I didn't think the game was that bad, but it wasnt a shiner!

"It Worked For Me, But..."
My copy of this game worked OK after some initial bugginess, so I do not share the same concerns expressed by the earlier review.

I guess my concern is that even the fully-functional version is not highly playable. Once you run through the play scenarios, which honestly does not take all that long, you end up in "sandbox" mode, which is highly repetitive and does not contain many variations.

On the plus side, the animations and graphics are fun, and the diseases and equipment are witty, too.

Keep your money in your pocket - at least until the developers come up with something much more variegated and playable than this is.

"Warning Do not buy this game!!!!!"
don't be fooled like everyone else was when this game came out, first the company has stated that they will not provide a patch to fix the many problems that this software has, and it does have a lot, second the game is not as advertised there are only 4 hospitals and the only difference between them is the color, you can hire about 60 doctors and nurses but it does you no good when you only have 9 patience to treat at a time, not all of the diseases are available (but the staff to treat them are) the story mode is pointless, you can start a game set everything up and then leave and come back 2 hours later and nothing really has happen no staff complaining about anything no patience walking out, you can't make any staff do anything except the janitors you can tell them to clean up, but if there are 9 people waiting to see a dr, and your 60 doctors feel that they need to talk to the 30 nurses that you have you can't force them to see the patients and that happens a lot, after about the four day all the staff kinda stop working
don't just take my word for it go to the codemasters website and see how mad other people are for getting this game and all of the problems it has