Five days after I was born, I was rushed into hospital with a complete inability to breathe while laying down. Since that day 23 years ago, I’ve spent a lot of time in hospitals, getting surgeries on my back (shoulder blades), chest, and twice in the groin; the easiest ways to get to the heart. That said, this has been a very small percentage of my time around hospitals. Too many times, for my own good, I’ve heard the phrase “Doctor to slack tong clinic please,” and I’d always shout “tongue” because the woman on the desk would always forget the U and the E at the end.

The number of hours I’ve spent in Theme Hospital both shouting at that woman, and getting to the third hospital every time before stopping, is stupid. Nevertheless, it is one of the staples of when Peter Molyneux and Bullfrog were at their height, and EA didn’t stand for your wallet being Electronically Assaulted. As a whole, I, and many others, love the game, but it is a product of 1997, and like most things from 1997, it has aged horribly. It is not a bad game, not by any stretch of the imagination, but it is dated.

This is where Gary Carr and Mark Webley come in, the artist and producer of the 1997 game went on to found Two Point Studios. Two years after the studios’ founding in 2016, its first game Two Point Hospital released as a successor to the former game. Two further years and the Xbox One, PS4, and Nintendo Switch ports released late last month. Since then I’ve been conducting research, poking, and indeed prodding it with a very pointy stick all in the name of reviewing the Xbox One version. It should go without saying, but with the love for the game it succeeds, take this with the grain of salt it is intended with.

Two Point Hospital is great, but running on a console can be a problem. As I said back when I reviewed Tropico 6 and Frostpunk for the Xbox One, control systems can often and very rarely be a hit for management and building games on consoles. For the most part, everything works perfectly as intended and feels fluid enough that I’m sure most wouldn’t have too much of a problem with it. However, there is one major issue that is quite annoying, the camera is either pitched off-center (Z-axis) enough that building in tight spaces is annoying; or when you are zoomed right on in there, it’s a little too far away to build on the far wall.

Oddly enough, being a man that’s very particular and pedantic about things, those are all the issues I have with the controls. I have minor things that get in the way, but nothing downright bothersome. The rest of the game flows beautifully across the campaign that is huge if you’re a 100% completionist nutter, but even without that desire to three-star every level you’ll get lost in the relaxing world. More than once I’ve sat down to play for an hour, only to realize that after three podcasts later and some missed work; I’ve placed a fresh painting on every wall, put a bin in every corner, and yelled at the janitors to catch the ghosts instead of terrorizing other staff members.

Dr. Ján Itor aside, you can feel the jump between Theme Hospital and Two Point Hospital, in little things such as the camera giving freedom of movement. There is so much character built-in, as the woman on the front desk passive-aggressively tells people not to slip in the sick, jabbing at the janitors. Then the radio kicks in proper and I just have a brilliant time. Marc Silk’s Nigel Bickleworth is just Edward Hibbert’s Gil Chesterton from Fraiser, Ricky Hawthorn is just Alan Partridge, and Harrison Wolff is the one I can’t pin down. All three beautifully add to the world of Two Point Hospital.

By now you’re probably asking, “What about the gameplay?” It is hard to reinvent the wheel, of course. It is a management simulation of a hospital, after all. You’ll be placing things and making money (or losing it). What is more important is the feeling around that, placing rooms and building them gives a nice wobble. The radio and snarky announcements build up a mind-numbing monotony sending you into a few hours of a haze building and making money. It’s not “addictive,” but it does relax you enough to lose track of time.

I made a slight jab at it, but it’s not a console-only issue. Janitors don’t care about the ghosts, if you kill someone (and you will), a janitor is expected to Ghostbusters it up. Instead, what will happen is you shouting very nasty swear words like an angry dad that is done with the Christmas pantomime telling them, “it’s behind you!” I don’t know how to comfort you with this, but you can hire as many janitors or set duties all day long, they don’t care. I hate them all.

The overall feeling of Two Point Hospital is that warm and snuggly feeling of comfy slippers, a big fuzzy dressing gown, and sitting down to watch the “Marge Vs. The Monorail” episode of The Simpsons. It is a brilliant example of updating a true classic with modern sensibilities.

An Xbox One review copy of Two Point Hospital was provided by Two Point Studios for this review.

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Two Point Hospital

$39.99 USD

9

Score

9.0/10

Pros

• Revitalizes a classic.
• Intuitive controls of a management game on consoles.
• Brilliant humor imbued throughout.

Cons

• Slight camera issues.