Two Point Museum Switch 2 Review
Summary: Two Point Museum continues the series tradition of excellence, only now in the palm of your hand!
4.3
Wonderful!
After Bullfrog’s untimely death in 2001, it seemed like colourful, fun simulation games were becoming a thing of the past. Enter Two Point Studios with their spiritual successor to Theme Hospital, Two Point Hospital.
Two Point quickly established itself with the backing of SEGA and became a beloved studio almost overnight. A decade later, their third game, Two Point Museum, was released to critical acclaim. I was able to look at the Nintendo Switch 2 port of it ahead of release.
Two Point Museum closely follows the formula of its predecessors, albeit with several tweaks for the new setting. Museums tend to be a fair less pressurised and time-sensitive places when compared to hospitals and universities, and this is reflected in the gameplay. Two Point Museum is a much calmer, more chilled-out experience than the previous titles.
Time is mostly spent placing exhibits and setting up expeditions. The former are what the patrons of your museum are there to see, and the latter is the method in which objects for your exhibits are acquired, boiling down to selecting a location on a map, picking the staff members with the required skills, and waiting a short amount of time. There are dozens of items to uncover, from dinosaur remains to rare specimen of fish.
Exhibits themselves, and their impact can be modified by placing related objects nearby, information stations, theming the area, and adding interactive elements. Doing so increases ‘buzz’, which is what encourages museum guests to donate, which is your primary revenue stream after selling tickets at the door, and merch on the way out.
These two elements, exhibits and expeditions, are what you’ll be spending most of your time doing in Two Point Museum. Alongside this, there’s the usual training and management of staff to consider, along with research, which is used to add new facilities to your museum and new tools for expeditions.
Porting predominantly mouse-controlled games over to consoles that primarily use a controller has always been a tricky thing to get right. In this instance, Two Point has nailed the fundamentals. The left stick acts as the mouse pointer, moving around the screen, and the right stick deals with the camera. The various menus that need to be navigated on a near constant basis are traversed with a press of the Y button, and X acts as a confirmation command.
Unfortunately, Two Point Museum doesn’t take advantage of the Switch 2’s surprisingly good mouse mode; however, the developers have said that it’s something that they’re looking into for the future.
Two Point Museum on the Switch 2 does a decent job of maintaining the art style and fidelity associated with the series. Playing in docked mode on a 4K TV, there’s a noticeable lack of anti-aliasing (though long-time Switch users shouldn’t be surprised by that), and objects such as trees are a little rough-looking when getting in close. This being a management game, though, most playtime is spent hovering several hundred feet from the ground, so it’s not really an issue, and as such, the game looks perfectly acceptable in docked mode.
I found the framerate to be a little unstable, with frequent, noticeable drops below the game’s 30fps target. These mostly occurred when something new was happening, for example, the helicopter returning from an expedition, or saving. They’re no doubt distracting and disappointing to see; however, due to the slow-paced nature of the game, it wasn’t a huge issue and something that I could live with for the most part.
Things fare a little better in handheld mode. The smaller screen has the effect of cleaning up the image significantly, despite the lower resolution. Performance even seemed to be a little better. It’s difficult to say whether it’s because it was actually better, or whether handheld modes’ VRR was doing the heavy lifting. Either way, I didn’t notice as many framerate issues while playing this way.
Final Thoughts?
Two Point Hospital is great, and this Switch 2 port is largely a great way to play it. An option for 60fps would have been nice, as would mouse support, but ultimately, the addictive gameplay of the Two Point series has translated well to the Switch 2, and console-playing fans of the series should seriously consider picking this one up.
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