It may not sound like much, but it sure is addictive. Everyone’s gotta go to the doctor sometime.Theme Hospital may not LOOK the best, but it sure is addictive!įor anyone that hasn’t played Theme Hospital, it’s the same basic idea as all the other Theme games (If you haven’t played a Theme game, I suggest you do so immediately.) You start off with a small yet humble little hospital that you, yes you, have to organise and manage, bringing your hospital to the top. But what’s here seems promising, both for longtime fans who’ve waited two decades for a followup and newcomers who perhaps weren’t even born then. Pathing was particularly problematic in the demo build, with patients stacking up in unholy jumbles in the waiting room for instance. It’s still an oddly engaging concept after all this time. That means Two Point Hospital can play it safe, lifting most of its ideas wholesale from its predecessor without feeling like a retread. Theme Hospital’s always seemed like a tough act to recreate, but luckily nobody’s tried in 20 years. Two Point Hospital is much more clean and parsable than the jumble of icons in Theme Hospital, and while aspects could still use work-especially notifications about unhappy employees-it should make managing your hospital more, well, manageable. There are also the usual interface upgrades. You can also pick up and move entire rooms after the fact, which while wholly unrealistic should help mitigate some of the micromanagement Theme Hospital’s later stages always devolved into. Two Point Hospital is incredibly satisfying though, allowing you to lay out a room and place all its furniture in blueprint mode, then watch it spring into place with a jaunty animation after you’re done. That aspect of builder-type games doesn’t often get attention because when it’s done right, you rarely notice. It’s a relief to spin around and place furniture just so.Īnd I also can’t understate how excellent building out a hospital feels here. That’s bound to be a welcome improvement, as Theme Hospital’s fixed isometric camera was a pain even at the time. What Two Point Hospital does is modernize it all, mainly on the technical side. It’s as fascinating and pertinent a commentary now as it was in Theme Hospital, 20 years ago. It’s a weirdly political game, but in a low-key subversive way that manages to say a lot merely by reproducing the awkward tangle of systems found in the real world. Lets them poke fun at it, laugh in the face of illness and the convoluted bureaucracy of the health care industry alike. Two Point Hospital captures that experience, and then gives the player control over it. There’s always a selection of magazines nobody cares about, ugly carpet and tile, the cheap wood-veneer desk, that ratty rack of leaflets covering every sort of malady, the greenish fluorescent lights humming along quietly. Somehow you can walk into a hospital in California, in Kansas, in Ontario, in England, and they all look and smell and sound the same. Going to the doctor is a shared experience. Maybe the mundane nature of it is Two Point Hospital’s appeal, though.
I recently spent an hour or so with an early build, crafting a basic clinic and (if we’re being honest) not doing a great job of it. In any case, Two Point Hospital emulates its predecessor to an almost slavish degree, and that’s not a bad thing. I can’t decide whether it says more about Two Point Hospital’s credentials or about how little the process of visiting a doctor has changed in the ensuing years.
THEME HOSPITAL BEST LAYOUT SERIES
If you’re feeling a bit of deja vu, it’s because that same series of events is lifted straight from the beginning of Theme Hospital, down to the filing cabinet. I recommend auto-hiring any person with the last name “Vape.” Then you build a “GP’s Office,” hire your first General Practitioner, and give them a desk, a filing cabinet, and a chair.
You place a receptionist’s desk and hire someone to staff it. From your first moments with Two Point Hospital, the game seems to be wink-wink-nudge-nudging you, “Hey, remember Theme Hospital?” You start with an empty building. Point being, this is about as genuine a spiritual successor as you’re liable to get.Īnd it shows, too.
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