Leapfrogging

Sometimes I just can't decide what I want to play and find myself bouncing back and forth between a few different games.  That's where I'm at right now, doing a little bit of this and a little bit of that.  Other than my inability to settle on one game, I've also been feeling a bit sad about the sudden demise of TellTale Studios.

Bouncing!

After I finished Two Point Hospital, I felt the inevitable crushiness of the "game hole."  "What do I play now?" as I stare at my Steam library and try to make a decision.  I don't know about other people, but I usually have at least one really weird period of time where I just stare at my giant list of games AND CANNOT MAKE UP MY MIND!  I decided to take to the store page and see if anything looked good--there's a new Tomb Raider game (but I usually wait till those go on sale for super cheap, because they inevitably will), there's a new Valkyria Chronicles game (also, a game that I will wait for a sale for)--the store page looked like kind of a bust, but one game did make a strange appearance on the top sellers list--CrossCode.  I decided to check it out and was intrigued by what it offered; a pixel graphics, SNES-inspired, ARPG-like, with a strong story.  The best part of the whole packages is that it was $16.99--a relative bargain!

Lea, the main character of CrossCode, meets many engaging characters.

I snatched up CrossCode like a delicious waffle on a Sunday morning.  CrossCode starts off with an unnamed character who is apparently trying to rescue someone who is important to her.  After a brief combat tutorial, your character finds who they are looking for, but something unexpected happens and all of a sudden this character wakes up in a completely different place--a ship that happens to be part of a huge, virtual MMO.  Your original character is now an avatar and is introduced to the mechanics of this new world through a series of tutorials.  At the end of the tutorial, the ship is attacked by a mysterious villain-like character who seems to have it out for you.  The crew of the ship helps defend you and you are transported to the beginners zone of the game world.  Your goal is to participate in the MMO and to work to unlock your memories to discover who you really are (the mysterious character at the beginning of the game).  Recovering your memories is complicated by the fact that your avatar's voice function is defective and you can only say "Hi!"  (A tech character named Sergey is working to recover your communication abilities and more one word responses get slowly added in).

So far, I've been mostly enjoying CrossCode.  Since the story is taking place in a virtual MMO, there are a lot of aspects of MMO's and MMO humor built into it.  The other characters that are part of the story are similar to many people you actually find playing MMO's--one of your initial encounters is with a character of your same class who decides that he needs to show you he is superior and challenges you to a duel.  The guy keeps randomly popping up and talking smack until you finally agree to duel him.  Yup, that's about right.  You also encounter helpful characters who end up becoming your pals and who will team up with you.

The gameplay is ARPG-like and you can face off against groups of enemies throughout many zones.  Unlike ARPG's, CrossCode also features a large amount of puzzles or puzzle-like features.  Simply navigating the map is a little bit like solving a puzzle--maps are made of of tiered features that can be navigated by finding certain places where your character can climb up and then figuring out how to get back to specific areas.  The puzzles themselves are fairly straightforward, but I am a little worried that many of them seem to be built around quick reflexes (like performing one action and very quickly having to move to another or manipulating 2 things very quickly).  I don't think my reflexes are what they once were and that I might struggle with some of the more difficult reflex puzzles.  I'm also a fool for knowing that games with a lot of clicking tend to make my wrist sore.

Trailer ownership allows you to add many customizable features to your trailers.

My other bounce between game has been EuroTruck Simulator 2.  I was excited by the most recent big content patch which added in several new and fun features.  The feature that people seem to be the most excited about is the ability to buy and modify your own trailers.  I am still not completely certain what the benefit is of owning your own trailers (maybe jobs pay more because you're using your own equipment?), but I do know that you can add unique paint jobs and other cosmetic features.  If personalization is your thing, owning your own trailers offers you another chance to make your trucks feel like your own.  A new DLC pack which offers new Krone trailers also dropped (for me, ETS2 DLC is usually a sale item).

The latest patch also offered an overhaul to the management UI as well as some graphical upgrades to some German cities.  I decided to scoop up the Italia DLC because it was on sale and am looking forward to some peaceful drives through the sunny Mediterranean.  It's really great that they continue to add content into ETS2 and that there is a large community of players who enjoy a truck driving sim.

Sad News

The sad news this week was that TellTale Games, makers of choice-based story games like The Walking Dead, suddenly closed.  This is particularly sad for players of The Walking Dead series who have been devotedly following the story of Clementine, and who had been looking forward to the latest (and what was to be the last) installment of her story.  Since the news of the studio closing, the newest season has been pulled from Steam and other digital platforms.  Originally it sounded like they were going to try to finish rolling out the series, but now it looks like it won't happen.

Group hug to remember TellTale Games.

Probably the worst part of the whole TellTale debacle is that the studio closed with virtually no notice--employees were basically told that they didn't have a job any more and were let go with no severance pay.  It's a sad end for a studio that had niched itself a unique place in the gaming spectrum.

I really enjoyed the storytelling and difficult moral choices in The Walking Dead and the ability to see what choices other players made.  Tales From the Borderlands is another of my favorites and I was surprised that the game could be so humorous but also still be strongly choice based--plus, it had some of the best musically scored moments.  This isn't to say that the games were perfect; there was much criticism that the games hinged strongly on the illusion of choice and anyone who had ever decided to buy a series at release knows how horrible those releases actually were--games were released that were full of bugs and it became completely normal to expect that release dates were more like soft targets that would inevitably be pushed back by weeks (or even months).  It got to the point where I wouldn't buy any TellTale games until the full series had been released--it just wasn't worth the frustration anymore.

I'm no expert and don't have any in-depth knowledge about why TellTale collapsed, but it really felt like after The Walking Dead became such a success that they went CRAZY.  There were so many new series and many of them seemed like really strange choices (Minecraft?).  Part of me feels like they bit off way more than they could chew.  Maybe they would still be around if they decided to focus on improving their successful products rather than trying to branch out in a million different directions?  I read something that mentioned that they stubbornly kept using their proprietary engine even though it was really difficult to program certain things.  

But who knows, I'm definitely not someone who understands game development or the gaming industry.  I hope all the employees who worked for TellTale land on their feet and thank them for the stories and great moments that they did create.

There's Really a Fire--Two Point Hospital Review

After 92 mostly enjoyable hours, I've finished building my dynasty of fabulous hospitals in Two Point Hospital.  I conquered an array of whacky, goofy diseases and managed my staff like a pro (that's definitely debatable).  Now that I've established myself as the "pointy mountain G.O.A.T" (45-stars!) I'm ready to weigh in on 2018's premiere hospital management sim.

Pros:
--As someone who played the original Theme Hospital from 1997, I enjoyed the fact that the game kept many of the gameplay and managerial features from the original, but still managed to add in new features to keep things fresh.  Many of the minor things that I found irritating in Theme Hospital were corrected and made better--for example, I always hated that you couldn't rotate or pan the camera, which was something that made placing items in rooms difficult.  Room design still follows the traditional grid system but has been improved by the ability to rotate rooms and the newly added copy/paste feature.

The Recurvery Room is used to treat patients afflicted with cubism.

--Tongue-in-cheek sense of humor.  Theme Hospital was definitely not about being a serious hospital management game and Two Point continues that tradition.  Diseases like turtle head (it's not what you think it is!), 8-Bitten, Grey Anatomy, and many silly others, give the game a light and humorous feel.  The machines used to treat these diseases are also flatout ridiculous--the turtle head machine uses a gyroscopic spinner and a giant suction cup to extract the patient's head from their body.

--Lots of gameplay.  I was very surprised by the fact that there were so many different hospitals.  For a game that sells for $34.99, I didn't expect to get anywhere close to 92 hours.  It's true that the number of hours you play could depend largely on how you play--if you chose to just earn one star and advance to the next hospital the game would be much shorter.  Having the option to choose to stay on a level and try for extra stars is a nice feature that provides flexibility for players.

--Different hospitals, different challenges.  Each hospital that you play has its own story and set of challenges.  One map is prone to outbreaks of epidemics which require you to be observant and vaccinate infected patients before too many escape and spread disease to the outside world.  Another map is a janitorial nightmare filled with flaming lava balls and machine wrecking earthquakes.

--Ability to micromanage or play freely.  I did a bit of both and found it enjoyable.  As an example, you can choose to assign your staff to certain tasks.  I used the heck out of this feature and made sure to assign tasks to staff members who had the best training for a certain task (like assigning my janitors with the highest mechanic skill to be the only ones to upgrade machines--especially at the third upgrade level where it can take for-freaking-ever to finally upgrade).  Other features, like being able to change the price of diagnostics and treatment, I didn't mess with.

Cons:
--Most hospitals are challenging in the beginning, but are much, much easier once you reach the two-star level.  One of the widest complaints I've read about the game is that some consider it to be too easy.  It really feels like once your staff is trained to a certain level (which does take awhile) that it's simply a matter of waiting to make it to the three-star level.  I think the game could be much improved by adding in new, more difficult challenges to reach that coveted third star.  There are definitely some challenging goals to reach (getting cure rate to 90% the first time can be tough and I really struggled with hygiene rate on one map).

--The goals for certain hospitals feel really poorly designed.  I was particularly irritated by the hospital at Pelican Wharf.  At that particular hospital there is an emphasis on technology and the goals revolve around cure rate, training staff in the research skill, and upgrading machines.  I wasn't too miffed by the cure rate goal, it's pretty standard, but the research skill requirement was just plain dumb--at the two star level you had to train 3 staff to level 3 research.  Why?  By that point in the game, since I had played the other hospitals to the three star level, I had very little research to complete.  It seemed like a waste of staff training slots to train that many staff in research.  It got even worse at the two and three star levels--two staff had to be trained in level 4 research and at the three star level, one staff member had to reach level 5!  I suppose that I could've just built a huge research room and popped in my crack research team, but it seemed like a waste.

The machine upgrade goal was another that became very irritating.  Even with building all diagnosis and treatment equipment AND upgrading it to the highest level, I was nowhere near to the 45 required machine upgrades.  My solution to this problem was completely inelegant--I built an extraneous general diagnosis room and upgraded the machine, then sold it, then repeated that about 10 times.  What a waste of money and janitorial time!

--More items needed.  Players earn "kudosh" for achieving certain goals in the game and can use that special currency to unlock new items that can be used throughout your hospital.  I had unlocked all the items by roughly the midpoint of the game and finished with 15,000 unspent kudosh.  I would like to see more items added and more ways for players to spend kudosh.

--I haven't experienced too many bugs, but there have been a few.  The good news is that the devs seem to be on top of getting things fixed and listening to player requests.

--The radio and music can get repetitive.  I enjoyed the different DJ's but got sick of the same 4-5 songs (which you can turn off).

Recommended for:
--Fans of Theme Hospital
--Players with a sense of humor that can verge on the cheesy and juvenile
--Players who want some management, but not an overwhelming amount

Not Recommended for:
--Players who want an extremely serious, deep management game about hospitals.

Chasing the Elusive Third Star in Two Point Hospital

I'm still going strong with hospital management game Two Point Hospital and I've gotten to the point where the scenarios are downright devious.  One level featured the combined repair nightmare of volcanic eruptions--which spew balls of flaming magma into your hospital and require being extinguished AND being mopped up--with the rumbly doom of earthquakes.  I spent much of that specific map (Shockley, I think) placing numerous fire extinguishers and rushing janitors to any smoking machine.  Mostly, I managed to avoid any explosions...but there were a few.  The worst part about explosions is that you have to buy new machines and upgrade them all over again.  This is much preferable to the outcome in the original Theme Hospital, where explosions would kill anyone in the room--patients or staff--and the room would be rendered unusable, which was a pain the butt because space could be very much at a premium.

The starting building in Rotting Hill.  It's a little shabby at first.

The newest scenario I have been facing is reforming the hospital at Rotting Hill.  It's one of those oddball levels where you actually start with a small, basic building filled with semi-broken machinery, a few untrained staff members, and a whole bunch of unattended janitorial duties.  Immediately I hired a janitor and set them to work repairing the smoking machines and cleaning up the rest of my small building.  In a way it was kind of nice not to have to build the basics; there was already a GP's office, general diagnosis, and psychiatry room.  After some frenzied janitorial activity the machinery was repaired and the building was cleaned up.

Rotting Hill features a few real challenges.  In order to gain stars players are required to cure a certain number of patients, raise their hospital value to a certain amount (neither of those two are exceptionally challenging), and, the real challenge, to raise staff morale to a certain percentage.  There are several ways to raise staff morale with the easiest way being to make sure that staff are taking adequate breaks to address their basic needs--doing this will keep morale at an acceptable level.  Getting and keeping staff morale above 70% can be challenging, the only real solution is raising staff pay into the "happy" zone.  This will definitely cut into your profits, but is much easier if you wait until the hospital has accrued a decent amount of money.  Raising morale is made doubly difficulty because of the fact that simply working in Rotting Hill gives all your staff a -10% happiness debuff.  Investing some training points in emotional intelligence will save you some morale hassles.

Rotting Hill properties are scattered and require lots of walking.

One of the other challenges of Rotting Hill is the layout of the map.  All the property on the map is spread out and requires patients and staff to travel between buildings.  Travel usually isn't a problem under normal circumstances, but in the case of needing a janitor to extinguish a piece of flaming equipment, it can require extra time.  I've also found that my janitors like to spend time in certain buildings while mostly ignoring some of the others--garbage accumulates, vending machines run out of goods, and toilets wind up clogged.  One feature that I wish they would add is the ability to assign staff to a certain area.  Keeping one to two janitors per building would help to ensure that my janitors don't have to try to make a mad dash across the extremely spread out map to extinguish a fire.

I'm making progress on Rotting Hill, but the third star for this particular hospital requires a daunting 95% morale.  It looks like everyone is getting a raise!  The volume of patients showing up for treatment has also been quite high and it always feels like my GP's offices are completely swamped.  It also feels like there is a very broad range of diseases to treat and that I'm building a large number of different treatment rooms.  All in all, it's a challenge.

Two Point Hospital has, so far, been everything that I hoped a new and improved version of Theme Hospital would be.  It's not perfect, and has been plagued by a few bugs such as the fracture ward bug I mentioned last week (if you're noticing that patients seem to be getting stuck near the plaster caster, change into the beta version of the recent update--the bug is fixed in that version).  I ran into another bug on the Blighton map where it would not roll over to three stars upon completion of a 90% hygiene rate (which took so long to finally accomplish--it's a real pain!).  Luckily, it seems like the devs are largely trying to address these bugs and certain requests for added features--one of the most popular requests seems to be the ability to copy rooms, which would save a great amount of time when building rooms like the GP's office.

 

Two Point Chaos

When I paid $31.99 for Two Point Hospital, I wasn't really sure how much gameplay I was going to get.  I have been pleasantly surprised by the fact that I'm still playing and that the game has gotten progressively harder.  The diseases have also gotten even goofier.

One part of Two Point that I'm really appreciating is that you can choose how long you want to play a certain hospital.  If your goal is to simply speed through the game, you simply have to accomplish the tasks to get to one star.  If, you're like me and are mostly a completionist, you can opt to continue playing a hospital and can work to accomplish the progressively more difficult tasks to take your hospital to the two or three star level.  Getting that third star can be a real pain--there's usually one task that is downright tough.  The tasks that I've found to be the hardest are staff morale, hospital attractiveness, and cure rate.  If you're having difficulty with staff morale try improving the prestige of the rooms in your hospital--this will give you a slight bump in morale.  The best way to improve morale is to raise the pay of your staff--shoot for the green smiley face when you're adjusting the pay slider (if you can afford it).

I found the hospital at Duckworth-Upon-Bilge to be one of the tougher scenarios.  Unlike the other hospitals in the game, Duckworth is a public hospital so you don't earn money for diagnostics, cures, or even retail.  In order to earn money, you have to complete specific tasks given to you by some Lord who acts as director.  Some tasks are relatively easy, like diagnosing five patients, while others require more time and effort, promoting a staff member or curing a certain number of patients in a specific room (it takes a long time to cure three patients in surgery).  The level gets tougher as time goes on, and getting to the coveted three star level is difficult.  The main challenge comes from the fact that as your staff grows to meet demand, the cost of your monthly payroll vastly increases.  If you can't complete those tasks in a timely manner (promoting staff gets really difficult), you will find yourself in debt and in danger of having your hospital shut down.  It took a few bankruptcies and reloads until I finally managed to get to three stars.  Some advice:  once you've accrued some reputation for your hospital, cancel any of the directors requests that are too labor intensive--a -10 reputation hit isn't going to hurt you too much.

My latest hospital was completely crazy--Grockle Bay featured a continuous stream of patients and I could barely keep up.  It felt like no matter how many GP's offices I built, that there was always a huge queue.  On top of that, there are epidemics that can break out and that spread like wildfire if you're not careful.  Epidemics require you to find the infected individuals, which seem to stand out due to some sort of strange behavior--walking like a zombie in the case of "abominable curse" or speed-walking and doing push-ups for those with "jogger's ripple"--then you have to vaccinate them.  You only get a certain number of vaccines, so you have to be attentive to the behavior of the people in your hospital.  Epidemics aren't too bad when there are a few people in your hospital, but they're downright chaotic when it is packed.

The diseases in the game have gotten even sillier than the early levels.  Some patients in Grockle Bay appeared to be completely naked, and in fact, they were.  Patients with the "emperor complex" will flood your hospital like a cartoony, naked wave.  They require treatment with a psychiatrist who must convince them of their nakedness.

A doctor works to treat a patient with Cubism.

A couple of my favorite new diseases are "8-Bitten" and "cubism."  Patients who are suffering from 8-Bitten appear on the screen as a pixelated, blurry figure and must be put through a treatment machine called a "debugger."  Patients with cubism look like Picasso's walking nightmare--a bunch of blocks crammed together into a human-like form.  To cure cubism, doctors must use a machine that extracts the cubes and the extrudes the person back into their human form.

It's very obvious when patients are suffering from 8-Bitten.

I've been having a lot of fun with Two Point, but I've also run into some possible bugs.  One of the more irritating bugs occurs when patients just stand around and don't do what they're supposed to do (like go to reception).  Usually those patients end up getting angry and storming out.  The only way I've figured out how to fix this is to pick up and move your reception desk/pod.

In my last hospital I had some problems with the fracture ward.  Patients would get up from the traction beds, stand in line near the plaster caster, and then basically be stuck.  The nurses would completely ignore them and no new patients could be admitted to the room.  If I picked up the plaster caster and moved it, the patients would leave (and usually die) and then the room would work for awhile...then it would hit the weird bottleneck again.

Patients strut their stuff if they have the "emperor complex."

If you're looking for a silly management game, Two Point Hospital is definitely good fun.  There seem to be a few bugs, but for the most part it's really stable and works well.

The Bodies are Piling Up

I had just barely restarted my abandoned The Witcher 3 odyssey before I found myself kicking it over to the side once again.  I was having a nice time, just having finished Hearts of Stone (which has some of the most annoying monster fights in the entire game), and feeling reinvigorated by the sunny, warm climate of Toussaint.  With the recent release of Two Point Hospital, I excitedly switched gears from slaying monsters to managing hospitals full of hilariously bizarre diseases.  My early impressions of the game are good, but I have managed to kill an embarrassingly large number of patients.

Two Point Hospital is the modern reiteration of one of my favorite childhood games, Theme Hospital.  If you were a kid in the 1990's and played PC games, there is a very good chance that you played one of the classic Theme games--either Theme Park or Theme Hospital.  Both games had a management focus, but were silly enough that they were still entertaining to a kid (and, FYI, you can still purchase both games on GOG if you're feeling nostalgic).  When I saw the early information on Two Point Hospital, I wasn't sure if it would still be entertaining to me as an adult--maybe it would be too simple or too goofy--but I'm not really finding that at all.  There has always been an added layer of management depth beneath the veneer of surface silliness; trying to balance out how much to pay your employees to keep them happy, how often they should take breaks, and managing finances are just a few that lurk below the surface.  My initial impressions of the game show that this is much truer and that now there is even more to manage.

My GP's Office features a coffee maker to help keep my doctors energized.

Thus far, my hospital experience has been fun, and learning the new ropes has been fairly easy.  I've been really enjoying the fact that the game is largely similar to the original, but that there are some added features that have made it a much improved experience.  It used to irritate me to no end that I couldn't change the camera angle in Theme Hospital and that I was stuck with the same view.  This made placing objects and utilizing space a difficult task because there were always certain places that you couldn't see.  Now, you can rotate the camera, pan it, and zoom in or out as much as you want!  The ability to move the camera is very useful as they have added in many new objects and designing rooms is more than just trying to place objects where they will fit.  In Two Point Hospital, each room has a certain level of "prestige."  Making the room larger than the minimum and adding in decorative or functional pieces will cause the room to be more prestigious and will make staff working there happier.  Each room has a set of items, specific to that room, that can be placed--for example, the staff room can include comfortable bean bag chairs, some vending machines, a coffee maker, and even the classic arcade cabinet.  Designing rooms to make them attractive and functional is much more fun than in the original game.

The dehumorfier waits for a patient infected with a Jest Infection.

Another part of the fun is the introduction of new, silly diseases.  One of my favorites is Jest Infection, which causes patients to dress as clowns.  The only way to cure them is to build a machine called a "dehumorfier" which sucks out all their clownishness and restores them to normal.  There's also the "pandemic" where people have pans stuck on their heads (the only solution is a treatment machine that is a giant magnet which pulls the pans off).  It's definitely tongue-in-cheek, juvenile humor, but it's lighthearted and fun.

One of the more complicated aspects of the game are patient needs.  Unlike the original game, these needs are much more complex--building a bathroom is not enough.  Now, patients get hungry, thirsty, and need to stay entertained.  Positioning drink and snack machines throughout the building helps keep them fed and watered and adding in leaflet stands, magazine racks, and bookshelves will keep them entertained.  Another new need is attractiveness--patients and staff both desire a building that is more than just the basics, adding in paintings, plants, and other decorations contributes to the attractiveness of your hospital.  They also add in a layer of maintenance tasks--plants need to be watered, toilets need to be unclogged, waste bins need to be emptied, and vending machines need to be restocked.  Janitors in Two Point have a long list of tasks added to the already daunting need to keep machinery maintained.

The Re-Colorizer cures a patient with "Grey Anatomy."

Similar to the first game, each level has a specific challenge that is part of the design.  The first few hospitals are largely tutorials that teach you about the new gameplay basics.  Unlike the old game you can choose to continue on with a hospital after you've accomplished the basic goals.  Hospitals have a starred ranking system and if you choose to stay on, a new, more complex set of goals will pop-up and you can work to accomplish them and add more stars to your ranking.  Something else that I'm finding and trying to get used to is the fact that discoveries and improvements stretch across ALL your hospitals.  It might be beneficial to accomplish the basic, one-star ranking at one hospital and move to a new one to unlock a certain piece of technology or an improvement.  I've just recently reached a hospital where all your staff are untrained novices who require time spent in training to improve their skills.  Things are not going well as diagnosis is difficult and time consuming and the percentage of successful treatments aren't high enough.  I've had many patients die--good thing I have a janitor who is trained in capturing ghosts....

Two Point Hospital has, so far, had the correct combination of fun and challenge.  I'm sure that the latter levels of the game will be chaotic and crazy.  If you are interested in Two Point, it has been on sale since its release earlier this week.