Two Point Hospital Review (PS4) | Managing a Hospital has never been this fun

Released on PC/Mac/Linux back in 2018 and developed by Two Point Studios, Two Point Hospital was recently released on consoles last week. The game is the spiritual successor to Theme Hospital, and it tasks players with constructing and managing hospital all over Two Point City.

As I have never played the original theme Hospital, I wasn’t expecting to enjoy the game based on its description. After all, taking on the role of a hospital administrator did not seem to be a fun time for me. To my surprise though, I had tons of fun with the game!

In Two Point Hospital, you are a hospital administrator of a health firm tasked to become the number 1 foundation for healthcare in the country. This is done by constructing hospital all over the city, all while managing them well so as to cure patients as efficiently as possible.

The controls are fairly simple as you can navigate around between menus with just a press of a button. At its core, Two Point Hospital’s gameplay revolves around building what your patients needs and keeping them entertained while they wait. It starts of fairly simply at first, but as your reputation goes up, the horde of sick people increases and the activity inside your hospital becomes even more hectic.

To combat this, you must build more facilities to accommodate the increasing number of patients. More facilities mean you’ll need to hire more Doctors and Nurses to care for the increase in patients. Not only that, you’ll also need more Janitors to keep the hospital clean and fix various equipment.

Aside from hiring more staff, you’ll also need to tackle various duties to keep patients happy. Ensuring the comfort of the patients leaves a good impression on your establishment, and this can be achieved by adding attractive furniture inside your hospital like wonderful chairs, magazine racks, and even a arcade to keep them company while they recover.

While patient care is of the utmost importance, hiring the proper staff is also an important part of the game. This means that you have to look at the qualifications of each staff member, especially considering that success rates of procedures are affected by your staff’s skills; failure on their part can lead to the death of the patient, bad news for your establishment’s reputation.

The qualifications of each staff member isn’t the only thing that you should consider though, you’ll also have to check their traits. For example, a staff with the “hangry” trait will become angry when they become, well hungry, so consider putting lots of vending machines with food all over the building.

Another thing to consider is that when a staff member gains experience after a certain amount of time, he/she will ask for a promotion to a higher position, as well as a salary increase. If you deny them a promotion or keep them underpaid, there’s a big chance that they’ll quit the job.

The game’s various systems and mechanics may sound tedious, but it’s actually tons of funs thanks in large part to the presentation, and because of how funny a lot of the patients problems are. I mean, who would ever think that being lightheaded means that you have a literal light bulb for a head?! There’s also a case where the cure for a PANdemic is a strong magnet to remove that pan stuck in a patient’s head. Even

Another great thing about Two Point Hopsital is that the the music is actually relaxing, plus it’s accompanied by a radio show that gives me that Morioh radio vibe as it helps brighten the mood while I work around the hospital.

Though at some points in the game, your hospital will run itself so well that you’ll be left with nothing else to do but to wait out the year to end or get the remaining stars. Thankfully, you can manipulate the flow of time by pressing L3 to stop everything in motion and R3 to make things go slower/faster, very helpful features in managing the hospital.

While the game ran well for the most part, I did run into an issue where some AI can get stuck on corridors that I made as their tracking can be hindered when they deem it to be too narrow. The only fix is to re-adjust the rooms, giving them a way to move. Another thing is that the screen can get a bit wonky when it shifts to the yearly review, though it might just be my hardware. Overall, these are but minimal issues and do not get in the way of gameplay all that much.

Verdict

I usually prefer more action-oriented titles, so it was a big surprise for me when that I very much enjoyed Two Point Hospital, a game that revolved around managing a hospital complete with realistic tasks such as managing staff members and addressing patient needs. These tasks might seem boring, but they’re actually quite compelling; plus, the game’s various scenarios are hilarious, especially the patients and their “sicknesses”.

After spending hours on the game, I can conclude that Two Point Hospital is definitely worth playing, both for fans of simulation games and for those new to the genre as well. While it’s not a perfect experience, Two Point Hospital is undoubtedly a fun game.

Two Point Hopsital is published by Sega and is available now on PC, Mac, Linux, PS4, Xbox One, and Nintendo Switch.