The big gaming news story this week was another delay to the much hyped Cyberpunk 2077. In typical fashion, CD Projekt rolled out the news and people immediately started freaking out. Then, in typical abhorrent internet idiot fashion, death threats to the developers started flowing to CD Projekt. Let me just state it here, that kind of behavior is loathsome--I love games, I have been highly anticipating Cyberpunk since I first saw the concept trailer several years ago, but in the end, it's a game! Your life isn't going to end because the release of a video game got pushed back twenty-one days. I saw a range of responses from "meh, as long as it's stable/playable upon release," to people being upset because they had scheduled days off to play on release. I don't quite know how to feel about the days off thing...I guess I am past the age (and it's just a huge pain in the arse to take a day off of teaching) where I would consider trying to take time off work to play a game. There were also some salty reposts of a past Tweet (from the last delay) where someone asked CD Projekt to promise the game wouldn't be delayed again, and of course, they promised. The delay seems to have its roots in the fact that they are trying to make sure the game is stable on all platforms--this includes the upcoming next gen consoles. So, have some patience people, we'll get it when we get it. You really have to consider the current circumstances too--we're in the middle of a pandemic, people are working from home, we're lucky to be getting it at all. If I remember correctly, The Witcher 3 was delayed a few times. The plus side of that situation was that it was very stable upon release--I remember very few, if any bugs. I would much rather wait and have that than go through the frustration of a crashing, buggy, sloppy mess of a release.
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| A patient with Soiled Self. |
With that unpleasant bit of news out of the way, I've largely been spending my gaming time playing through the "Culture Shock" DLC for Two Point Hospital. I three-starred the final hospital last night, so I've finished the whole she-bang. The second map in the DLC is the Mudbury Festival. Mudbury is a wave based map, but they decided to make it different from past wave based maps. Rather than slowly increasing the percentage of patients you need to cure each wave, they decided to have a bunch of random objectives. Some waves might require you to train a certain number of staff; some waves require you to upgrade machines; some waves require the dreaded "hospital attractiveness" and you'll spend your time plopping down a number of yucca plants that will then be neglected--it changes every time. The most challenging parts of this map though were the waves that would throw a large number of patients at you with a specific type of disease that needed to be cured. One wave had 20 patients with Stunt Trouble and 20 patients with Soiled Self (a new disease where patients look like some kind of muddy, swamp creature) and you had to cure all of them (in a wave of 80 total patients). Basically, to be successful at Mudbury you need to be ready to quickly copy rooms, to have a large staff to potentially staff these additional rooms, and to prioritize the objective patients. It took me several tries to get past this tricky wave, but I did finally manage it. The final wave (to get a three star rating) is a real doozy--you have to cure 40 patients with Soiled Self. This is particularly challenging because diagnosing it can be tricky--for some weird reason patients seem to only be diagnosed through psychiatry or general diagnosis. Your best bet for success is throwing down some extra GP offices, about 4-5 general diagnoses, an extra psychiatry, and 5-6 Wash Pits. It might take you a few tries, but you will eventually get it.
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| The Wash Pit helps soiled patients get squeaky clean! |
The final map in "Culture Shock" is a bit of a weird one. It takes place in the fashionable Fitzpocket mansion and involves a new-ish gameplay mechanic--there is a set of criteria that impacts the amount of funding you receive. In order to receive full funding you must do the following: keep visiting VIP's happy, cure a high percentage of patients, work quickly to diagnose and treat patients, make your hospital attractive, and also score a high room prestiege score. The percentage that you earn is based on how well you do all these things and is assessed on a three-month basis. On top of that there is challenge in the fact that you start off with a very small hospital area and have to purchase additional real estate. The most challenging part of this map is funding related--if you don't keep Zara happy and get her to pay at 100% or higher you're going to be scraping together pennies to try to do simple things like train your staff or build new rooms (there's a wide variety of diseases on this map). There's also the challenge of trying to root out the paparazzi (the alien imposter-like annoyances) who are trying to crash the party. They are noticeable by their flashing cameras and will clog up your diagnosis rooms unless you take care to boot them out.
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| The new cure room for treating Private Parts. |
If you enjoyed Two Point Hospital, "Culture Shock" is a chance to spend more time gleefully managing a few new scenarios. It adds some new objects, new diseases, and new challenges. If you're hoping that it's a massive change to the base game, it's not that. I enjoyed it and found Mudbury to be the most challenging of the new scenarios. At $8, I feel like it was money well spent.
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