And we’re back to Two Point Hospital… or rather, we’re STILL playing Two Point Hospital because the content keeps coming and it’s keeping us busy! Aliens have come to Two Point in the latest DLC, Close Encounters. The sci-fi vibe and fictitious Area 51-inspired area revolve around a UFO crash and government cover-up, as you will learn from the beginning of your mission.
The new areas include Goldpan, Camouflage Falls and Chasm 24, and each plays similarly to Pebberley Island’s. Goldpan is the town next to the UFP crash, and it requires you to complete goals to unlock more hospital plots. It also focuses on spotting the alien invaders that crowd your hospital, and even though they are just non-hostile curious creatures, they delay treatment for everyone else and clog up your system without ever paying for any services.
Camouflage Falls is a secret government facility equipped to cure all sorts of illnesses that spread after the crash, and you will have plenty of waves of sick people to cure. Chasm 24 is a state-of-the-art underground research facility so advanced, that your final reward for achieving 3 stars is the Robo-Kit that allows you to build Robo-Janitors. This special staff is required to maintain the disaster stabilizers. They are not cheap (advanced tech never is!) but they don’t require a salary and they are always happy, so the investment is definitely worth it.
There’s an array of 34 clever and aptly named new illnesses, such as Science Friction, Horrorscope, H. G. Swells, Star Struck, Sputneck, Meteormites (no, it is not a typo), and probably my favorite this time around, Asterrhoids, the description of which I MUST share: “Sufferers exhibit a sensitive, fluorescent area of inflammation. Caused by crops being contaminated with space dust, making them too volatile for consumption. Requires treatment with anti-inflammatory bum-salve.” Asterrhoids! Bum-salve! I just can’t keep a straight face reading this bit!
As always, with new DLC and new illnesses also come three new treatment rooms. The Self-Assembly cures patients with the Flat-Packed illness, turning them from flat pieces of cardboard into normal people again. The Toad Hall houses the Poly-Cog, which is used to restore patients suffering from Frogborne illness back to their original form. Personification is used to cure patients with Lack of Humanity with a few laps around the centrifuge pertaining to the Spin-Doctor.
Several new items have also been added, probably the most creative bunch out of all the expansions. There’s a holographic world map, charging stations for robo-janitors, robo-janitors (obviously), the entertaining arm-bot, pods instead of the regular ward beds, an incinerator garbage can, a large database computer, an alien tentacle plant, brain jar, futuristic benches, and other goodies to decorate your hospital and entertain your patients and staff.
The main issue I had with this DLC was regarding goals that asked me to find the alien infiltrators. These pesky aliens are taking up valuable space and using up your time and resources without ever paying for diagnostic or treatment. They will roam around indefinitely from room to room causing lines to grow longer and longer. Here is where the game became super time-consuming. Yes, even more that it already was! For the longest time, I couldn’t figure out an efficient way to spot and unmask them. Since they mimic humans, the only animations you can see that set them apart are rummaging in trash bins, writing notes on a clipboard, and more commonly, glitching. I understood that they “glitched” and may temporarily appear in their true form, except I never spotted them. I also learned that they make a weird high-pitched zapping sound when this happens, and I was hearing them all over my hospital, but still had no luck on finding them.
I grew frustrated with the visual search process, so I opened my patient list and started looking up every single one to see if something looked off. Sure enough, there was, and it took me a lot of looking, searching and comparing to eventually see what gave them away. The aliens skip the GP’s Office! They go from diagnostic room to diagnostic room, and eventually to treatment, but never once they set foot in the GP’s Office. When you hear the high pitched glitching sound, open the patient list. Look at each patient individually and inspect their LOG tab to see which rooms they have been to. If there’s been no visit to the GP Office, they are an alien. Click the “go home” button, and voila, alien exposed!
It’s easy to get carried away with the alien hunt once you know what to look for, and it’s equally easy to neglect the rest of the hospital for a while while you focus on the infiltrators, so remember to check the messages to make sure everything is still running smoothly. And watch out for those Space Rock weather events!
As for other little add-ons, there are plenty of hilarious lines to listen to coming from the radio DJ and your sarcastic loudspeaker announcer. New music has also been added, and you always have the bonus option of using your own music content to create your playlists, while still hearing the radio announcements over your favorite tunes. It’s a nice touch to be able to customize our soundtrack while still being immersed in the game with the tannoy announcements and radio host conspiracy theory commentary.
Even with the greatest annoyance this time around being exposing the aliens, Close Encounters still offers plenty of hours of fun gameplay and enough challenge to keep Two Point seasoned hospital managers coming back for more.