REVIEW: Two Point Hospital is the medicine we need, now on consoles

A game with a dose of humour can help us cope with fear and uncertainty.

Two Point Hospital video game. Picture: Supplied.

A game with a dose of humour can help us cope with fear and uncertainty.

Humour is a time-honoured coping skill, which is why the Two Point Hospital video game could be the dose of cheeriness we need at the moment.

Two Point Hospital, developed by Two Point Studios, has been on PC’s since 2018 but has now made its way to the PlayStation 4, Xbox One and Nintendo Switch consoles.

The game is a humorous take on running a hospital. The graphics are cartoon-like, the patients have silly diseases (“light-headedness” involves having an actual light bulb for a head, for example), and nothing is taken seriously – which makes it all a lot of fun.

The game is very clearly a spiritual successor to Bullfrog’s seminal Theme Hospital game from 1997, which is excellent because it’s one of the classic titles from the golden age of 1990s gaming for a reason (and that reason is that it is extremely good).

Two Point Hospital video game

Broadly, Two Point Hospital is a hospital management simulation – you are in charge of building the hospital, hiring and training staff, and making sure the patients get cured. There are several diagnosis and treatment rooms in the game, staff facilities, waiting area items, and most of the other bits and pieces you would expect to find in a hospital.

While the hospital is clearly inspired by an English National Health Service hospital, in the interests of game play, it has to be run at a profit –

Whether it’s people suffering from “Mock Star” (thinking they’re Freddy Mercury) or “Jazz Hand” (caused by too much finger clicking when listening to jazz music), the ailments your patients present are all over the top (and frequently involve puns).

The cartoon-style, silly humour, ridiculous diseases and amusing in-game radio station all work brilliantly to create a quirky and upbeat experience which is also fun and upbeat.

There are 21 hospitals (levels) in the game, and each one is as much about managing floor space and staff as it is about curing patients – after all, a specialist treatment room might help the hospital but if you have to hire a new doctor to work in it and it takes up space that could be used for another GP’s office.

Two Point Hospital video game

Juggling all the competing requirements can get quite challenging, and it’s rather rewarding to see it all come together – not to mention the insights it provides into exactly how much work healthcare workers in the real world have to juggle every day.

As a fan of Theme Hospital and the PC version of Two Point Hospital, I wasn’t sure how the game would translate to console, but the developers have done very well and the transition has proven smooth and effective.

While a console controller isn’t quite effective at navigating menus as a PC mouse and keyboard, the game experience is still intact – all the humour is there, it looks the same, the game play is the same and it’s playable from the comfort of your couch, or bed, or wherever else your gaming console is.

If you are the sort of person who likes to cope with adversity through humour, then Two Point Hospital may be just what the doctor ordered for these difficult times – and it’s an efficacious elixir, at that.

RRP: $59.95

Two Point Hospital video game