Become a Mighty Commander of Ambulances in the "Speedy Recovery" DLC

Over my spring break week I had the chance to check out the latest DLC for my favorite silly hospital management sim Two Point Hospital.  The surprise "Speedy Recovery" DLC offered players three new hospitals and a fleet of goofy ambulances to manage.  All the DLC for Two Point have been relatively cheap--about $8 if you purchase it early and that price tag is appropriate.

My fleet of ambulances.

What's new in the DLC?

The main feature of "Speedy Recovery" is the addition of a new map with special "emergency" events that periodically pop up.  Each hospital features a plot of land that serves as your ambulance bay and that can serve multiple parked ambulance types.  Once you've purchased an ambulance you can deploy it to the site of an emergency to retrieve patients and return them to the hospital for treatment.  In order to operate ambulances you need to have staff trained in driving--these staff (nurses and doctors can both be trained in driving and eventually flying when you reach the second hospital) will stop what they are doing, run to the ambulance you deployed and then be unavailable while they are retrieving the patients.

During the ambulance ride patients will be partially diagnosed (and diagnosis level depends on the type of ambulance you deploy) and can skip the trip to the GP's office when they arrive.  Instead, they will head directly for various diagnosis rooms, so you can expect your general diagnosis, cardiograms, and other diagnosis rooms to stay fairly busy when ambulances return.  Basically, you need to make sure that you have enough staff to operate ambulances and also keep the diagnosis rooms manned.  I found that I needed to hire more staff than in previous hospitals--and more staff means more monthly expenses.

The Airloovator and Big Healer wait for deployment.

The highlight of the DLC is the variety of ambulances available for purchase.  At first you can only purchase ground ambulances that travel on the roads, but once you get to the second hospital flying ambulances are unlocked.  The ambulances range from a giant, speedy monster truck to a slow, floating giant duck.  Smaller ambulances tend to be fast, offer poor diagnosis, and have a limited capacity (only carrying 1-2 patients).  Larger ambulances offer the opposite--slow travel times but better diagnosis and higher capacity (the flying duck ambulance can carry up to 8 passengers and the Pantmobile--a clown car--can carry up to 12).

Part of the challenge in the DLC is strategizing how to best use your ambulances--certain emergencies only have a few patients, so it's a race to get to them before your competitors do.  Patients will expire over time, so it's important to get to them as quickly as you can.  There's also the matter of ambulance maintenance--your ambulances suffer wear and tear and must be repaired.  A new staff member--a genius mechanic named Gretchen Gearbox joins the staff at each hospital and will repair your ambulances.  You can also train janitors in the new mechanic skill, which is generally a good idea because like other staff, Gretchen also needs to take breaks (and those breaks can coincide with times when you want to deploy an ambulance and it needs to be repaired).

Treating a patient with Under the Weather.

Like previous DLC's there are also a few new diseases to manage--patients presenting with Under the Weather are dressed in rain proof attire and are accompanied by a tiny storm cloud that periodically rains...leaving small puddles anywhere those patients travel to (meaning that your janitors will be busy mopping up).  The other new visible disease, Hive Mind, presents as patients who have a beehive stuck on their heads and honey dripping onto their clothing.  Patients with Snowed In present once you've reached the final map in the snowy reaches of Two Point County--they resemble giant, walking snowmen and must be treated in their own treatment room.  One of the interesting decisions with these three new diseases is the fact that you can build more than one treatment machine in the room.  Unfortunately, each machine requires a doctor to operate it, so you have to up the number of staff who can work in the room and it can also add to the staffing burdens.  There are also several other new visible diseases that utilize traditional treatment rooms (like the pharmacy and psychology office).

Each new hospital presents different challenges at each star level--most of them revolve around utilizing your fleet of ambulances.  I found the most difficult challenge to be maintaining top emergency reputation for three months straight--doing so requires making sure that your ambulances are constantly being deployed and that you're able to successfully treat the patients who arrive.  It's easy to fall behind or dispatch an ambulance that arrives too late to an emergency and comes back empty.  The first two hospitals also feature a steady flow of regular (non-emergency) patients who still need to visit a GP's office and go through the same normal treatment pattern.  The final hospital relies strictly on emergency patients and it's very important to make sure you're maintaining a steady flow of incoming patients or your finances can go downhill very quickly.

The one negative point worth mentioning is that the DLC is currently slightly buggy.  Most of the bugs involve ambulances and staff getting stuck.  I had to restart one map several times because of this bug.  Hopefully future patches will address this problem.

Recommendation:

I love Two Point Hospital and will happily play any DLC they release.  It was surprising that they released more DLC when the new Two Point Campus is coming out in May.  I found the addition of ambulances to add another layer to the management aspect and to be somewhat challenging (mostly maintaining reputation for three straight months).  I didn't feel that the DLC added anything earth shattering, but it was a chance to relax and play more Two Point, so I'll take it.  If you enjoyed the base game and just want another chance to try out some new hospitals, it's the perfect opportunity.

Waaa-wooo Waaa--wooo--There's a New Ambulance Themed DLC for Two Point Hopsital!

This week some surprise news dropped that made my month (it's only the fifth day...so it's only up from here, right?)--Two Point Hospital, my favorite whacky hospital management sim will be getting a new DLC!  The "Speedy Recovery" DLC looks to add ambulance services to the competitive world of hospital management.  Of course, there are also new hospitals, new diseases, and new cure machines.  I'm not exactly sure how the ambulance aspect will work, but I love Two Point, so I'll happily play anything new.  Take a peek at the release video if you're curious about this surprise DLC:

"Speedy Recovery" releases on March 15th and I can't wait to dive into managing new hospitals and a fleet of silly ambulances.  This DLC announcement was a big surprise to me--I assumed the upcoming Two Point Campus (which I'm also floored for) would be the number one concern for the folks at Two Point.  I guess we get something to tide us over until Two Point Campus releases May 17th.

You can currently purchase "Speedy Recovery" on Steam for 10% off and the fabulously low price of $8.09.  

Back to the Future in the "A Stitch in Time" DLC

I'm a big Two Point Hospital fan so you can guarantee that when/if a new DLC drops that I will be snatching it up.  The most recent addition is the time travel themed "A Stitch in Time."  Three new hospitals challenge you to travel through time to cure a variety of diseases while coping with the general weirdness of traversing the space-time continuum.

Pros:

+ Three new hospitals to manage with each having its own distinct time period and set of illnesses.  The first map is medieval themed with patients strolling through in a variety of hose and silly medieval outfits.  The next map takes you way, way back to prehistoric times and all patients are cavepeople with appropriate prehistoric diseases.  The last map thrusts you into the future and has its own unique twist--you have to build a new room with a special machine to send patients back to their appropriate time period.

+ Time portal mechanic is interesting.  Patients don't arrive by conventional means and instead pop into the level through portals in the floor.  One of the new damage/disaster sequences is a "time storm" where a whole bunch of patients will come popping out of the portal, the ground shakes and lighting strikes throughout the hospital causing damage.  This presents a dual challenge of an influx of patients and the need for your janitorial staff to repair and clean.  Eventually you can unlock and place more time portals.

+ New items to make your hospital appropriately themed for the time period.  A variety of medieval, prehistoric, and futuristic items can be purchased with kudosh and added to the decor of your hospital.

+/- No new treatment rooms (other than the Yesterizer which sends patients to the appropriate time period--which is staffed by an assistant).  This might be a downer for anyone who was hoping to build another treatment room and do the requisite research to upgrade said machine.  I am actually glad that they didn't add in any new treatment rooms because scrolling through the huge list from all the DLC's has gotten a bit crazy.

+ New diseases.  My favorite is reptile dysfunction, but there are plenty of others with goofy descriptions.  Most of the diseases are basically a time themed re-skin of the core diseases--for example, rather than jest infection, patients now have jester infection and are dressed like medieval jesters.  It's a clever way to reuse treatment rooms.   

Cons:

- I wish they had come up with something a bit more unique using the time portal mechanic.  There's only one map that requires you to build more portals.  The number of portals you have seems to influence the number of patients that will appear and, of course, during time storms you'll face even more of a challenge as patients pop out of every portal.

- An abundance of psychiatric illnesses.  My poor psychiatrists were completely bogged down on almost every map.  You will probably want to build multiple psychiatry offices on each map.

Recommendation:

If you're a Two Point fan, you'll undoubtedly want to grab this DLC.  If you're hoping for something drastically different or new mechanics/new treatment rooms...you might be disappointed.  I wish they had done a bit more with the time portals, but I'm mostly content to while away some time trying to manage my silly hospitals.

Outrage is Now

First of all, happy Halloween to everyone out there!  Steam decided to launch a Halloween sale in honor of the spooky holiday and many halloween-esque titles are currently being offered at a discount.  I've been trying to decide what I should scoop up--I'm feeling strong Doom: Eternal vibes because it has been awhile since I punched a demon and then tore its stupid face off (current mood, btw).  Part of me feels guilty about my recent foray and then betrayal of CrossCode, so I think I'm going to try to soldier through it and maybe grab Doom: Eternal for later.  Choices, choices.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Oh CrossCode, I Will Never Finish You

I was feeling fairly proud of myself last week for dusting off CrossCode, a game I had started, played through for a decent chunk of time, and then had shelved.  Then, I had some internet issues (no internet or phone service for two days....) and also got some unexpected DLC news for one of my favorite silly management games, Two Point Hospital.  The new DLC, "Culture Shock," was being released in just a few days!  The scent of burning plastic was intense as I whipped out my credit card to grab the newest addition to my sprawling hospital mega-industry.  Prior to my internet cutting out I had moved into a brand new zone in CrossCode and had also found myself stumped by a puzzle.  After trying to solve the dang thing for 30-45 minutes (and I had figured out 3/4ths of it!) I decided to go to bed and that I would look up the solution in the morning.  The morning came and the internet went and my motivation to finish the puzzle went with it.  I fully intend to finish CrossCode....some day.

But let's talk about the newest DLC for Two Point Hospital, "Culture Shock."  The DLC is set on a series of maps that are designed to have an artistic theme--the first map takes place on a movie lot; the second map takes place on the scene of an outdoor music festival and I haven't quite unlocked the third map yet.  I am guessing the third map will angle more toward the hospital attractiveness goals.

Dr. Roderick Cushion at your service!

The first scenario has a fun map that is set on the location of Plywood Studios, a functioning movie studio--you get to build your hospital next to a giant, mechanical shark in a pool (very Jaws-esque) and other movie themed set pieces.  The first scenario challenges you to build a hospital that is actually the set for a reality hospital show featuring none other than the famous film star Roderick Cushion!  Roderick is playing the role of an actual doctor, so you're required to have him on staff.  Having a famous movie star on staff isn't all it's cracked up to be--Roderick Cushion is untrained, has an insanely high salary, and isn't content to share the staff room so will retreat to his private trailer so he can properly rest (which means he takes very long breaks and has to walk across the entire map).  While the medical drama plays out, the shows producers will periodically propose events to add drama to the show and not all of them are positive--sometimes they will offer you a bonus if Roderick cures some patients and other times they want machines to explode (I allowed this to happen once....the bonus was more than the cost to replace the machine).  As an added challenge, fans can periodically leave reviews for the show that can impact your reputation--let's just say that they're mostly negative and it takes awhile to build reputation.

A patient with Stunt Trouble waits outside the cure room.

Every new Two Point DLC features a few new diseases that include new cure rooms.  The first of these that I encountered on the Plywood Studios map is called "stunt trouble."  Patients afflicted with stunt trouble can be seen wearing Evel Knievel-like outfits and pretending to ride a motorcycle.  To cure these patients you must allow them to act out their dare devil desires by allowing them to ride a fake motorcycle through a set of faux flaming rings.  There are also several other new diseases that have visual cues--some patients present with giant, pixelated glasses on; others are wearing one of those weird green screen outfits covered with little white balls (from motion capture); and one where patients have a giant pencil sticking out of their heads (writers block!).

A new added challenge is trying to impress the resident art critic Zara Fitzpocket.  Like other celebrity guests she periodically asks to be invited into your hospital so that she can inspect your artistic flair.  I generally get around to fully decorating my hospital, but my artistic sensibilities weren't enough to impress Fitzpocket.  I'm guessing you need to place a dazzling array to sculptures, paintings, and other artistic features to adequately gain her praises.

I played Plywood Studios to three stars and have now moved on to the second map, Mudbury.  Mudbury takes place on the scene of a music festival and it's your job to provide medical care to the various waves (yep, it's another wave based challenge) of festival-goers who are afflicted with a wide array of health issues.  The wave based maps are always kind of fun, but also a bit obnoxious due to the fact that your income can vary quite wildly due to the massive influx of patients and then the relative calm as they go through the diagnosis and treatment process.  Mudbury seems like it might be a bit different because the goals they want you to accomplish on each wave aren't necessarily built around cure rate.

If you're a Two Point Hospital fan like me, check out "Culture Shock" and enjoy some relaxing hospital management.  

Two Point Madness

The Steam holiday sale has been in full swing for well over a week and despite the fact that my wishlist has expanded, I'm happy to report that I've managed to quell any impulse buys.  The one and only purchase I have made has been the "Close Encounters" DLC for Two Point Hospital.  It had been quite awhile since I had last played TPH and I excitedly downloaded it onto my new(ish) PC.  I figured that once it downloaded I could hop right into the alien-infested madness of the new DLC, but there's where I was wrong.  Periodically I get irritated at the fact that the cloud save feature on Steam can be slow and so I've occasionally turned it off (before I decided the new PC was going to be a reality).  Welp--long-story-short...I had disabled those saves about midway through my initial completion of the game (I three starred every hospital because I am obsessive).  Since TPH is one of my favorite games, I wasn't too upset about having to re-play much of it and I've been putting my improved hospital administration skills to the test.

ALIENS!

I've read some very mixed things about TPH, but there's just something about it that manages to always pull me in.  I love micromanaging the details of my staff and hospital and trying to keep things running smoothly.  There's always a better way to do something and it's my goal to figure that out for every hospital.

Besides managing hospitals, I've been keeping my eyes on the 12 days of free giveaways on the Epic Store.  In various Epic giveaways I've snagged some interesting titles that I fully intend to check out at some point.  The 12 days games haven't been bargain bin rejects by any means--I grabbed Superhot and Hyperlight Drifter--a couple of quality games that I have wanted to play, but haven't necessarily wanted to buy.  The giveaway has also featured some awesome titles like Ape Out, Celeste, and FTL.

I've also found myself bouncing around into various games for brief stints.  I did some more lawyering in Phoenix Wright:  Ace Attorney, but I can only handle its goofiness for so long (I still have one last part of the trilogy to play).  I also found myself venturing back into Borderlands 3--a game that I felt has seen improved gameplay, but is still just more of the same--and starting up a new playthrough with a different character.  This time around I decided to go with FL4K and despite being underwhelmed at first, I'm starting to enjoy the playstyle.  FL4K can summon a variety of beasts to accompany it and, since I'm playing solo, it's really nice to have a critter that can tank and soak up bullets while I stand back and fire away.

And, on an almost completely un-gaming related note, I've been enjoying Netflix's The Witcher series.  I had very low hopes for it and have been pleasantly surprised.  I've seen some people commenting on social media that "it's the best video game adaptation I've seen!"  I would hesitate to call it an adaptation of the games as the series has largely followed the storylines in the books.  The first episode started off a bit slow, but I've enjoyed the very obvious nods to the books and some of the backstory that has been built into the show.  I've particularly enjoyed Yennefer's backstory and can see how it is also somewhat linked to concepts in the books--it's mentioned that sorceresses use glamours to alter their appearances (and make them all very beautiful) and there is a moment in the books when Geralt jokes to Yen about how all sorceresses probably look under those glamours (hunchbacked, traditionally hideous and witchy)--and then the show went there and gave Yen those very traits.  I'm a little sad that they changed Dandelion's name though :(

The Obligatory GOTY 2018 Post

Since 2019 has rolled around (Happy New Year!), it's now time to reflect on the year in gaming that was 2018.  I didn't play many brand new titles, and there are definitely a few that came out this year that I'm waiting to go on sale (The Return of the Obra Dinn and Shadow of the Tomb Raider), but there were a couple of standouts that come directly to mind--Assassin's Creed:  Odyssey and Two Point Hospital gave me many enjoyable hours of gameplay.  (My full reviews for boh games--Assassin's Creed: Odyssey Review and Two Point Hospital Review)

Runner-up:  Two Point Hospital
In the summer of 2018 the news I had been waiting for since 1997 (not really, but we can pretend) finally popped up--someone was doing a remake of one of my absolute favorite games!  For many, many years Theme Hospital was my go-to game when I didn't have the money for anything new or there just wasn't anything else that I wanted to play,  Theme Hospital offered up a blend of somewhat crass, goofy humor and legitimate management skills all in in the strange world of hospital administration.  I cautiously held my breath that its 2018 reiteration would be able to encompass that same sense of humor and enthralling, but still enjoyable style of gameplay.

Two Point Hospital offers up management with a humorous twist.

Upon booting up Two Point Hospital, it was obvious that the developers had worked hard to make a game that was inspired by the classic Theme Hospital but was unique.  Designing and managing hospitals feels much the same, but much, much improved.  Each level presents a different hospital with a specific set of challenges and also offers the ability for personalization--dog paintings everywhere (that's how you should do it)!  The massive roster of new diseases in Two Point kept me chuckling throughout the game--naked patients strolling through the hospital with the Emperor Complex or weirdly pixelated blobs for unfortunate souls suffering from 8-Bitten.

One of the things that I like best about Two Point Hospital is the ability for players to choose how they play each level.  There is a star rating system that requires that specific goals be met to move up to the next rank.  In order to advance the story, players simply have to manage each hospital to a one-star level.  The other possibility is that players can choose to continue playing the same hospital and face new, more challenging sets of goals.  Each hospital can be raised to a three-star level and there are special rewards for each improvement in star rating.

Sure, there's definitely some nostalgia in my love for Two Point Hospital, but I think that any gamer could find something to enjoy.  The management aspect is challenging but is still fun and there's a goofy sense of humor that prevails throughout the game.  I would encourage anyone who wants a lighthearted, funny management game to pick it up....stat!

My GOTY 2018:  Assassin's Creed:  Odyssey

Even the countryside is breathtakingly beautiful in Odyssey.

Strangely, my first ever foray into the long-running Assassin's Creed series was the ancient Greek themed Odyssey.  I knew of the series but took it as a console staple that probably wasn't worthy of the attention of PC gamers.  Honestly, I probably wouldn't have picked it up if I hadn't have received it as part of a free game bundle that came with my graphics card upgrade.  It's here that I will reiterate that I was completely wrong; Assassin's Creed:  Odyssey is a great game and I had 143 fun (*mostly!) hours exploring ancient Greece.  Playing Odyssey made me a fan of the AC series and now I'm working my way (with mixed success) through the various games.

The thing that awes me the most about Odyssey is the massive world filled with fictional realizations of historical locations.  I could easily hop my character on a horse or boat and marvel at wandering around the Parthenon or stand beneath the towering statue of Zeus at Olympia.  Way too often I found myself smiling like an idiot at a stunning fictional world.  It says something that a game managed to evoke that reaction.  Plus, you can't deny that Ubisoft strives to make beautiful, captivating worlds.  They are constantly drawing you to high vantage points so they can draw your attention to the world around you.

Kassandra is one of my *new* favorite characters.

Besides gushing about the beautiful world, I also enjoyed playing as Kassandra--one of your possible character choices (something new to the series).  Kassandra was everything I wanted in a female character and is extremely well-acted.  As a female gamer, I think it's encouraging to see more characters like Kassandra who are well-written and who are clearly trying to break old-school stereotypes of what female characters in video games should be.

I'm in no way trying to say that Odyssey is perfect--it's definitely not on the level of The Witcher 3, and there are improvements needed.  I loved the world, but it's just too big--to the point where many tasks and locations get repetitive.  There were aspects of the world and story that were novel at first, but turned out to be completely pointless (nation power and conquest battles, I'm looking at you!).  I think the game could be improved by more focus on creating memorable storylines and exciting, chaining missions.  The combat can also feel oddly unresponsive at times.  Having played an older game in the series (Black Flag) it's obvious that AC is changing to become more RPG-like, and I'm excited about this fact.

I hope everyone out there played some memorable games in 2018 and that the games of 2019 bring us even more to play and love.

Are We There Yeti?

After fully realizing my pirate-y bloodlust in Assassin's Creed 4:  Black Flag, I decided it was time for a break from all the stabbing and shooting.  Luckily a brand new DLC for one of my favorite games from this year rolled out at just about the perfect time!  The Bigfoot DLC for Two Point Hospital offers even more whacky hospital management.  If you haven't gotten your fill of curing weird diseases and playing task manager, well, this is your chance to re-enter the fray.

Two of the three new hospitals in the Bigfoot DLC.

The Bigfoot DLC offers up three brand new hospitals located in on the snowy northern half of the Two Point county map.  Each hospital offers up unique challenges that include a few new diseases to cure combined with a theme.  The first hospital, Underlook, is situated near a hotel/ski resort that is looking to add hospital services for its accident prone guests.  This hospital reminds me of the nightmare that was Duckworth-Upon-Bilge, but it's more like a Duckworth-lite--you only get paid for achieving the random goals that the hotel periodically throws out and these can vary from promoting a certain number of staff or curing patients in a specific treatment room.  Like on the Duckworth level, you have to pay attention to your cash flow and make sure you aren't hiring too many staff or overspending.  The level is further complicated by a reputation mechanic--guests can review the hotel (and those reviews can be either positive or negative) and it will have an impact on your reputation.  Your reputation starts out at a pitifully low level and the scenario requires you to raise it much higher.  Luckily, marketing campaigns are very useful for raising your reputation and cancelling a few undesirable hotel requests won't damage your rep too much.  One of the more unique aspects of this level is that the hotel helps to cover your costs based on your cure rate.  This factor makes this level much easier than Duckworth.

The K-9 Away is used to treat patients with Barking Mad.

The next map on the DLC is Swelbard.  Swelbard is an abandoned research facility and requires you to start with a ruined building full of garbage that needs to be cleaned up.  The major challenge on Swelbard is that all your staff are completely untrained.  Every staff member you hire requires training, so hiring enough staff so that your rooms are covered while training occurs is a major balancing act.  At Swelbard a new disease crops up, Barking Mad, which turns patients into dogs (it looks like a human in a dog costume).  To cure this new disease you must build a K-9 Away treatment room that looks like a giant dog house.  A few other diseases with visuals also start popping up (diseases that can be treated in the treatment rooms you've already unlocked)--there's Eye Candy which has patients with giant lollipops over their eyes; Tartan Telomeres which presents as patients with plaid patterns on their faces; Bard Flu which populates your hospital with Shakespeare look-alikes who require some psychiatric treatment; Evergreen presents by coloring patients faces green with some nice leafy branches.  Partway through the level you will see patients dressed like giant Godzilla-like creatures or robots traipsing through your hospital.  The new disease Urban Metropolism presents in two ways and requires patients to storm through a miniature city, wrecking it and then getting cured by some mysterious laser attachment.  Curing all these diseases and hitting research related goals (training staff in the research skill...which always feels like a waste) leads you to victory.

The Reanimator freezes, then reanimates patients with Monster Mishmash.

The last map in the DLC was the one that I found had the most unique twist--Roquefort Castle throws some real doozies at you.  The castle is haunted, this means that bunches of ghosts (5-10) randomly pop-up throughout the hospital.  Your janitorial staff has to be on their toes because capturing all those ghosts is time consuming and requires cleaning up the ectoplasm that they leave behind.  The map itself also presents some challenges--the castle offers plenty of space, but it's made up of very long corridors that don't directly connect to each other.  Everything is very spread out and ghosts can pop-up in any part of the hospital.  The castle is also prone to several natural disasters--avalanches and hailstorms--which will have your janitors scrambling even more!  Avalanches will damage your machinery and cause trashed pieces of the building to fall onto the floor and hailstorms will deposit large chunks of ice (similar to lava, but without the burning) that could damage machinery.  I would classify this level as one of the "janitorial nightmare" levels.  A new disease, Monster Mishmash, is also introduced and requires a special treatment room in the form of the Reanimator.  The most challenging part of Roquefort is the janitorial aspect--it was very common to have a rash of ghosts followed by an avalanche or hailstorm.  This situation would leave your machinery damaged, your hospital littered with unsightly garbage, and a bunch of ghosts scaring patients and leaving blobs of ectoplasm everywhere.  Then throw in the way that the map is spread out for some real craziness.

One thing I noticed about all three hospitals in the DLC was that they seemed to throw quite a few diseases requiring treatment rooms at you.  You really need to hire more staff to cover those rooms and it complicates things even further.

Treating Urban Metropolism means letting patients smash a miniature city.

So, the big question remains, should you buy this DLC?  If you enjoyed the base game I would definitely recommend it.  The DLC offers the chance to play a few more hospitals and cure some clever diseases (Bard Flu is my favorite).  It sells for only $8.99 and will add about 20 more hours of hospital managing fun (if you're shooting for the illustrious 3-star level).  Sadly, there is no bigfoot disease (but there is a yeti who will visit your hospital and inspect it).

What's new in this DLC:
--several new visual diseases to cure
--three diseases with unique treatment rooms
--new items (some are Christmas themed) to spruce up your hospital
--three new hospitals with unique scenarios
--new research projects (this may have been added in an update prior to the DLC)
   

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.