![]() ![]() Dragging out rooms and placing objects like doors and beds all has a similar sense of weight and tactility that you get in games like Cities: Skylines. The way the patient twitches with discomfort with each turn of the screw is so impressive.Īs well as looking great, Two Point also feels really satisfying to play. I think my favourite is the animation for treating light-headedness, in which the patient sits inside a giant machine that unscrews the lightbulb head before replacing it with a new head. A janitor cleaning a toilet will often disappear halfway up the U-bend, while a patient receiving an X-ray will do a Disney-style skeleton dance while inside the machine. The detail is truly remarkable, with bespoke animations for almost every action in the game, all of which are laced with Two Point’s daft humour. But it’s the character animations that stand out above all. The clean, claymation-like aesthetic perfectly encapsulates this light-hearted tone. I particularly enjoyed the passive-aggressive tannoy announcer, who offers quietly venomous soundbytes such as, 'We apologise for the litter. Your patients suffer from pun-tastic diseases such as 'light-headedness' where their heads transform into literal lightbulbs, and 'mock-stardom' which triggers an irresistible urge to dress like Freddie Mercury. Tonally it’s very tongue in cheek, proudly following the Bullfrog tradition. Two Point immediately hooks you in through its wonderful presentation. You’ll also need to hire janitors to keep the hospital clean and maintained, and assistants to man reception desks, cafeterias, and so forth. Doctors diagnose patients and treat specialised diseases, while nurses manage pharmacies and wards to look after patients with less serious ailments. To get each hospital up and running, you’ll need to build rooms, place items, and hire several types of staff. Two Point County appears to need it, however, given the wide variety of strange ailments the inhabitants suffer from. ![]() It’s got more doctors than a Tom Baker fan convention. Two Point Hospital tasks you with building and managing a network of hospitals across the fictional Two Point County, which if it were real would have the best medical coverage of any county ever. Two Point Hospital is a superb modernisation of that original concept, gorgeous to look at, thoroughly engaging, and negotiates delicate balance of depth and accessibility. As it turns out, the answer is not really, but when you play the record this well, it doesn’t matter. When I heard about Two Point Hospital, I was naturally excited, but also curious as to whether the game could do more than play the same record. In any case, it took the original creators of Theme Hospital –Mark Webley and Gary Carr – to finally follow up the idea with what amounts to a sequel in all but name. Perhaps that’s because everyone agreed Theme Hospital nailed the concept first time around, although that doesn’t usually stops the games industry from copying a successful idea. The only remedy is the same one prescribed 20 years ago. If you wanted a modern Theme Hospital, however, no other treatment was available. If you want a modern Dungeon Keeper, you have several options that are admittedly less good, but still decent. If you want a modern Theme Park, Planet Coaster will happily let you on that ride. Theme Hospital was arguably the best of Bullfrog’s management simulations, which makes it all the stranger that it hasn’t been mimicked up to this point. ![]()
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