Two Point Series Review (Xbox, PlayStation, Nintendo & PC)

Suddenly, I’m back in Bullfrog Productions’ quirky world of inflatable heads and supernatural fecal matter—a place where I feel at home, but as per the norm, completely out of my depth. Say, if it was just about tending to an ill patient or a local ne’er-do-well, then I wouldn’t have an issue with it. But, being Two Point, nothing is ever as it seems. I want to be the best doctor, the perfect teacher, and the finest curator of historical artifacts — but I won’t be. It isn’t because the act of fulfilling these aspirations is a difficult thing; it’s that Two Point has a certain sense that it needs to be dramatically different than your average business simulation series. In this world, you can be a medical practitioner, but only if you’re willing to kill a few patients through mass negligence. Similarly, you can be a curator of forbidden heirlooms, but only if you’re willing to share your museum with a few ghosts and ghouls. You get the point.

Two Point has a way of keeping you on your hind legs, not necessarily with its textbook progression tropes, but with its frequent curveballs and nonsensical events and challenges. It isn’t like your traditional sim, in that it doesn’t want you to merrily skip along a dotted line and enjoy the panoramic views, but rather, to tackle a snow storm head on and accept whatever oddities that tie in with it. Granted, it isn’t on the same level as Civilization or, dare I say Frostpunk — but it does know how to bend the boundaries of a typical sandbox sim and provide you with something to prod with a dozen different utensils. Where a game like Frostpunk would usually give you something like a spork to move mountains with, however, Two Point hands you a vacuum and asks you to exhume spirits. And the best part is, it laughs at you for doing it, too.

Suffice it to say, Two Point falls into a category of its own—a capsule that openly rejects conventional means of progression and adopts comical methods and open-ended sandbox shenanigans for you to experiment with. With a plethora of souped-up episodes that span three hallmark settings—Hospital, Campus, and Museum, respectively—each chapter gleefully swings open its doors and invites you to immerse in wall-to-wall weirdness and moldable realities of a fictional sort. From educational facilities to ghost-trodden medical wards, prehistoric exhibits to supernatural mansions, fledgling directors have the opportunity to indulge in fleshy Career Modes and, true to the spirit of tongue-in-cheek sandbox games, fail miserably whilst a meteor shower pulverizes the foundations of your ambitious home away from home. Thanks for that, Two Point.

There is, of course, a lot to unpack here, and not to mention a ton of little details that make Two Point the bundle of joy that it is. Frankly, it isn’t just a sandbox game with a beating heart; it’s a parade of kookiness—a snowball of fleeting moments and comical flumes, hilarious water cooler jokes and seemingly harmless practices. Embedded within all of these signature tropes is a surprisingly lofty sandbox that allows you to explore vast creative possibilities and knuckle in on some truly unique worlds—allotments that you can build, embellish, and gradually evolve through a series of quests, off-the-cuff tasks, research techniques, and scenarios. And to be honest, that’s barely scratching the tip of the iceberg.

While Two Point didn’t pioneer the unconventional sandbox blueprint, it did take a huge chunk of its influence from the studio’s Bullfrog Productions era—a period in which titles such as Theme Park World and Theme Hospital came along to stir the pot. To that end, Two Point is, in short, a spiritual successor to Bullfrog — and it doesn’t take much to connect the dots between the two series, either. It’s all in the witty remarks and inflatable foreheads, I think. But no, it is awfully obvious that the two share a lot of the same elements. The thing is, you don’t need to be a skeptic to understand why Two Point opted to pick up where Theme left off; it wasn’t broke, and therefore it didn’t need to be fixed.

Two Point might not have the most advanced creation suite on the market, though it does have a lot of great facets to consider, including a dynamic UI, unique set pieces and rooms, and a ton of original quests that span countless seasons of gameplay. With multi-site sandboxes and sizable modes to work through, each chapter also has a ton of replay value. And that’s a boon in itself: the fact that you can easily slip out of the architect’s seat and happily fall back into it to experience an entirely different scenario. And, with a myriad of locations and expansions to explore, you’re essentially spoiled for choice, too. Again, a huge plus for the Two Point team.

Verdict

As a modern successor to the studio’s original works, Two Point more or less has all of the right jigsaw pieces in place to incubate countless ideas, as well as the basic infrastructure to allow its architects to delve into hundreds of job opportunities and settings to create bigger, bolder, and more complex worlds. Clearly, it has the means to continue, too, with all of the tools of the trade and a global backing to hang its coat in any alternate reality that it deems appropriate. And I hope it does continue venturing down this path, too, as it has the potential to lead the pack as one of the best sandbox series on the planet, what with its peculiar way of weaving scenarios and presenting them as self-contained episodic stories. It’s Bullfrog in a different skin suit — so the credit feels appropriate here, all things considered.

Of course, Two Point isn’t the toughest cookie to crack, nor is it in line to steal the throne from one of the most iconic strategy city-building sims à la Civilization. Yet, I can appreciate a good old-fashioned sandbox when I see one, and honestly, Two Point more than deserves the same level of support and attention as its peers. It’s bonkers, lovable, and above all, brilliant. It’s Bullfrog 2.0, in a nutshell — what more could you want?