‘Two Point Campus’ offers evolution, not revolution

engadget.com:

Finally, I’m benefitting from the world’s seemingly-endless appetite for nostalgia for the good ol’ days. 25 years after Theme Hospital was released, and four years after Two Point Hospital, its remake spiritual successor made its debut, we’re getting a true sequel. 

Two Point Campus takes players back to the world of Two Point County, this time tasked with building a chain of new universities in plots adjacent to the previously-dysfunctional hospitals you’ve finished renovating.

I recently played through an early build of the first two levels of the game. Freshleigh Meadows is a cut-down tutorial stage, while the Rome-inspired Piazza Lanatra is the second area players can expect to access. With the release date pushed back to August 9th, I get the sense that the title isn’t yet as polished as the developers might have hoped. This is, at least in part, attributed to the fact that much of it was created remotely while staffers were locked down at home.

I’d only recently (re)completed Two Point Hospital and found that I could breeze through these early levels on instinct alone. At first blush, you might feel that Campus is a little too similar to its predecessor for it to be deemed a standalone sequel. Much has been pulled over wholesale from the previous title, albeit with some graphical polishing. The team clearly felt that if it wasn’t broken, there was little point in trying to fix it, at least as far as I’ve played so far.

The most notable difference is that Two Point wanted to address the most common complaint made by players of Hospital – that they didn’t enjoy the layout puzzles. In both Theme Hospital and Two Point Hospital, you’re given intentionally problematic floor plans for you to build your facility on. That’s