Review | Two Point Hospital – Jumbo Edition

LifeisXbox’s Two Point Hospital – Jumbo Edition review | In real life, my medical knowledge isn’t very impressive, even though my mom actually works at a hospital. Luckily, you can just pretend you’re all that in Two Point Hospital – Jumbo Edition, a game developed by Two Point Studios and Red Kite Games, and published by Sega. In no-time, you’ll be running a bunch of hospitals like you’re a medical genius. Not being familiar with Two Point Hospital yet, I was very excited to discover what both the base game and the extras (this is the Jumbo Edition after all) had to offer. I am usually a fan of games like Planet Zoo, but I wasn’t sure a medical variant was gonna be just as much fun. Let me share my (clinical) findings with you in this review!

We played Two Point Hospital – Jumbo Edition for 12 hours on the Nintendo Switch.
This game is also available on Xbox One and PlayStation 4.

What we liked!

• Content | The Jumbo Edition of Two Point Hospital includes A LOT of playable content for the price of a mere 40 Euros. There’s your base game, of course, which already introduces many hours of fun and elaborate gameplay. There are also four big expansions included: Bigfoot (for those of you who like wintery scenes), Pebberley Island (exotic vibes all the way), Off The Grid (focuses on ecology), and Close Encounters (we got aliens, I repeat: we got ALIENS). Honestly, these extra expansions ensure a lot more hours for Two Point Hospital – Jumbo Edition, and I love the variety! Oh, and there is a sandbox mode where you can do whatever you want and adjust all settings to your own taste! There are also some other extras that come with the Jumbo release, like a retro items pack including a pinball machine, and an exhibition items pack with some cool art pieces that you can place around your hospitals. I’m only a few hours into this game, but I can already tell many, many, many more will follow!
• Visuals | The graphical aspect of Two Point Hospital – Jumbo Edition is solid. It’s definitely not the highlight of this game, but everything looks as it should. The art style is very cute and there are plenty of details present on the items in your hospital. The real value when it comes to graphics is the customization that is possible. You can decorate whichever way you want, and you can even change walls and floors. I feel like adding this extent of customization really adds to your overall view of the graphic part of the game.
• Sound | You can either play this game with sound or without. I did both, and enjoyed both, so the sound aspect wasn’t necessary, but it was fun to turn it up every now and then. There’s a radio playing, including songs and even a commentator that talks every now and then. There are a bunch of songs that were specially made for Two Point Hospital, and every time a new song comes on, you actually get a small notification on your screen with the title and artist of the song. The game offers a variety of songs that are quite enjoyable to listen to. There are also sound effects when you click, and there is even a little bit of voice acting involved. For example, you’ll hear someone through the speakers talking to personnel or staff and they’ll say things like ‘in the event of a fire, please run for your lives’. It’s funny announcements like this that especially made me want to keep the sound on at times.
• Tutorial | Two Point Hospital is quite an elaborate game. So, if, like me, you are new to this game, a good tutorial is needed. I’m really glad this was the case here. All the basics were explained thoroughly along the way. If you take a look around yourself, you might still discover new tabs (like a financial overview), but no worries, a little screen with helpful information will pop up the first time you open a new screen. I didn’t feel lost for a single second, even though this game can be a lot to take in in the beginning.
• Information | There is so much to keep track of in Two Point Hospital – Jumbo Edition. When managing a hospital, you get to organize it, decorate it, and hire people. Sounds easy enough, right? Well, you get a lot of insight and depth into everything that goes on in your hospitals. Of course, you can see how happy and energetic your staff is, but you can also see how much every employee costs you and how much (s)he earns per year. You know what your patients miss and how happy they are, as well as which illnesses there are, what their cure rate is, and more. There’s an elaborate financial overview, and graphs really make everything look super serious and detailed. It’s all very interesting to look into, but even if numbers aren’t really your thing, and you’d like to keep it more casual, you’re not obliged to keep track of everything.
• Good fit for consoles | Personally, I usually prefer playing these types of games on my computer. However, this edition was released on consoles only, and yes, this increased my interest in the game, actually. I was pleasantly surprised by my experience of Two Point Hospital – Jumbo Edition on the Nintendo Switch. Everything ran quite smoothly, and navigating the various menus was a lot easier than expected. My boyfriend actually bought the Steam version of the base game when he saw me playing on my Switch, and I have to admit, I’m glad I own the Switch edition for this one (even though the PC version is also incredible, of course).

Somewhere between

• Loading screens | As long as you stay in the same hospital, you’re perfectly fine when it comes to waiting times. Unfortunately, switching between hospitals could take some time. You just get a basic loading screen (so nothing interesting to look at), and it happened that I had to wait up to a minute before being at another hospital. I get that this is probably a big ass game, but loading times of 1 minute should not be happening. I do want to add that I played this game on a Nintendo Switch Lite so that may have caused slow loading, but still, people nowadays don’t like to be kept waiting.

What we disliked

• Bug when creating new rooms | When creating a new room, like a GP’s office, or a Ward, there are certain items that are required to be present. A door, for example, is a must every time, but some rooms need some extra items before you can actually finish building them. However, for some reason, a bug occurred every now and then when creating new rooms. A few times, I had all the required items put in the room, and yet, I still could not finish building it. This meant having to cancel editing the room and starting over. This usually didn’t take up too much time, but after a few times, it did get on my nerves.

CONCLUSION

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