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Two Point Hospital Review: The spirit of Theme Hospital will cure what ails you
If youve ever wondered how many doctors it takes to unscrew a lightbulb then Two Point Hospital has the answers you seek. It turns out it only takes one doctor and one machine, at least when the lightbulb is where the patients head should be.
Naturally, this delicate procedure takes place in the De-Lux Clinic, and if you arent here for the puns, then theres no helping you.
Two Point Hospital is the much anticipated spiritual (this is a good pun that will be explained later) successor to Theme Hospital. Your aim is simply to manage an empire of hospitals and make sure you can keep the populous healthy, and maybe win some awards along the way.
You arent the only health care mogul, oh no, there is plenty of competition to keep you on top of your game.
Each hospital comes with its own set of requirements and rules, especially in the early game where each one serves to introduce a new aspect of healthcare for you to master, or a new hazard for you to keep at bay.
Initially it is simply a matter of building a new room and curing whatever new disease that area has, but as you move forwards you will have to start paying attention to things like the training of your staff, or even the environment itself as the colder environments require constant heating.
You start each one in the same way, you build a reception and start planning out what kind of layout you want.
You then hire a receptionist to find out what ails the poor citizens of Two Point County and send them to the correct place; more often than not this will be the GPs office, in which case you had best build a room for that and hire a doctor.
Of course, the way you build the room affects how much it adds to the hospital, if you make it too sparsely decorated and the smallest it can be then youll find your hospital wont be as attractive.
If you decide to plaster it in posters, plants, and trophy cases, then youll notice a significant increase in the number of people visiting your establishment. If more people visit then you get more money, which in turn leads to more arcade machines in your hospital, which leads to more people. You want gameplay loops, you got em.
The careful balance between spending money and making money must be maintained at all times. It is also completely different in place to place, after all some of the hospitals attract better staff than others so hiring a better doctor might be better, or it might be more than you can afford.
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Each person you choose to work for you has their own personality and skills. Some may be better at running a hospital ward, where as others might make your pharmacy machine work faster.
Janitors are perhaps the most interesting personnel choice as they have a couple of skills that are essential to the growth of your little medical centre.
Only a mechanically minded janitor can upgrade your machines for example, and only some janitors come equipped with the ability to hoover up ghosts if a vengeful patient kicks the bucket. Every choice you make matters.
The overwhelming satisfaction that you get from having a fully functioning hospital is incredible, the fact that you are almost constantly learning new things only helps to push away the tedium that such tasks can often bring.
The fact that you will repeat the same tasks here and there but still find them enjoyable speaks volumes about how entertaining the game is. The humour is consistently tongue-in-cheek, and consistently funny.
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The different radio presenters throughout the county all have their own personalities and all of them are fun to listen to, the music is more like muzak but fits what youre doing perfectly.
There will be plenty of people who just want to know one thing; does this hold up against my rose-tinted memories of Theme Hospital.
Thankfully the answer is yes. If you are looking for a game filled with off-the-wall humour, medical puns, and more weird afflictions than you could ever imagine, then this is the game for you.
Two Point hospital is a joy to play throughout, there are moments that can begin to feel repetitive, but with the constant addition of new things to manage youll often find yourself swept up in the strange world in which it inhabits.
Above all else it captures what made its inspiration so great, it is an enormous amount of fun, and one that will keep you curing people for hours and hours.
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The Verdict – 4/5
The Good
- Good sense of humour
- Strong feeling of progression
- Enjoyable gameplay
- Puns, just oodles of puns
The Bad
- Can feel a little bit repetitive in some of the later stages
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