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.