The Ups and Downs of Roller Coaster Life (Theme Park World (PC))

Member Name: shadowhawk

Product:	Theme Park World (PC)
Date:	07/09/04 (1788 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Great Improvement, Easy on the mind

Disadvantages: Gets a bit tedious

Theme Park World
PC Game

I was complaining about boredom to my girlfriend down the phone one day and the next day she decided to bring me a treat Theme Park World for my new computer now I have one that can handle games at a reasonable level.

Installations:
This was easy enough it was mostly done by ease just using the default setting so you really can sit there just selecting next, next, next and it does not move around too many things on your computer and shouldn?t cause you any problems after a time.

First Impressions:
I had played Theme Park on the Playstation format, so I was delighted when I first loaded up the game and saw the graphics that were available. The menus and set up had changed a lot.

Assistant:
You are given an assistant who will talk you into the game and give you help and advice to get you used to the game, using the menus and tips on what customers like. He is a big black blob with eyes, mouth and some floating hands. In Halloween land they give him an axe in his head and in Dinosaur land he has a adventures hat on, no matter how weird he looks once you?ve played the game for about 2 hours he will get so on your nerves and you can shut him up just keep an eye on the right of the screen for the important messages that pop up check them all.

Graphics:
I am running the game on a 128mb graphics card so I have it at its highest setting which you can achieve with a 64mb graphics card. As far as the graphics go compared to other games it is not the greatest around they seemed dumb down and blocky at times. But at the same time the graphics look childish and I think this really adds to the innocent feel of the game. If you have lower then a 64mb graphics card then this game will look rather badly to you and will end up ruining your enjoyment of the g
ame.

The Game:
The idea of the game is to build and run a successful park by mixing profits with improvements. You build rides, shops, sideshows, and features in your park charge the customers to come in and to purchase things. At the same time you have to hire, train, and give staff orders and while trying to run a profitable park you have to keep the customers happy and keep them coming.

By completing missions you get golden tickets when you get 3 golden tickets you receive a key and you use these keys to unlock the other 2 lands. You start of being able to use a Dinosaur land and a Halloween one, need 3 keys to unlock the Fairy land and 5 to unlock Space land.

These Golden Tickets are gained by doing things that you do not know about. Get one for like getting 200 people into your park at a single time, but you do not know what the precise task is the assistant will give you some tips about what to improve to get the tickets but he will not tell you precisely.

Challenges: You get challenges set for you from time to time by the assistant and these will give you a task to do in a time normally it will be a short task and will not tie you up too long but they give great money back. A challenge can be something like sell 100 ice creams in 60 days, always will be time based and involve selling something.

Rides:
You get such a big range of rides per land on this game. The vary from a bounce castle to a roller coaster the better rides take more time to research and cost a lot more to build and while you need the ?white knuckle rides? (the exciting ones) you do also need good old fashioned calmer rides to please all customers.

The great thing about World is that the rides vary from land to land and are all personalised to the land. The bouncy castle in Dinosaur land is in the shop of a Dino and you bounce on
his belly but in Halloween land you bounce on a brain. It gives the game a great look for each land as all the rides share a common theme.

When building roller coasters, log flumes, and go karts you make the track layout yourself and you can be really initiative and make really nice big scary rides to pull in the customers. Word of warning it is so easy to go over the top with building these rides and cause yourself to plummet into major debt.

With the rides you can set their speed, capacity, and duration these all will affect the safety, excitement, and how quickly the ride breaks down. Faster rides may keep customers happy but they break down quicker resulting in more fixes which customers do not like its all about gaining experience to get the right balance.

Golden Tickets can be trained in for special rides at each of the locations; these are rides that the scientists would not otherwise of thought of and you can unlock them instantly without charge.

Shops:
A lot of shops are on offer as well this include food shops, drink shops, to balloon shops. I really like the range and offers a lot of range to keep you interested from start to finish. Again like the rides the shops are individual tailored to the land and blend in a look really good with the landscape.

In my mind the shop that really sticks out is the fancy dress shops which you build and customers can buy and wear fancy dress and you can actually see them wearing it. In Dinosaur Land you see a lot of the little ones walking around in the tiger suites. I think showing them in it was a really nice touch which they didn?t have to do.

Balloon shops are quite similar you can see al the customers whom have balloons but from time to time you get people who decide to burst and pop other people?s balloons and this really ?deflates? spirits.

In The shop you choice the qua
lity of good, price, and the unique value each determine the profit you make and the customers happiness again you have the battle of profit verses happiness. Stocking is now done automatically and you will not need to worry about this like in the original, well that?s a load of my mind.

Sideshows:
These are like little games that the customers can play where they risk their money for prizes. These are tailored again to the land in which they are brought, and look just as bit as good as the shops.

Nothing too complex with these you set the chance of winning, the money for a go, and the cost of the prize all of which effect the rides excitement. Thrill the customers while hitting a good profit it is very hard with the sideshows but as long as you aren?t too short term thinking with profits then they can be a great source of income.

Features: These may seem unimportant they are things like rocks, and trees that make your park look good but a good looking will park will increase your customers happiness. They do include some useful items like bins and toilets that keep a good clean park going, also staff rooms are purchased here.

Staff:
Cleaners: These are the low of the lowly paid they wonder the paths cleaning up the floors. Set them an area to patrol and they will get anything up from the floor. Also they clean the toilets just call one when the toilet gets so smelly that a stench comes from it. These all look the same a white bearded man in a brown coat with a brush in hand, they didn?t really put a lot of thought into personalising them. Also you need a load of them to cover a good size park.

Mechanics: These handy little blokes fix your rides, and install upgrades on the rides they walk around in their blue clothes, and their yellow hat. Rule of thumb is normally 1 mechanic to each 3 of your rides always rounding, 4 rides need 2 and 7
need 3 and so on. I like what they have done here they have made fat ones and skin ones gives a bit of differences to them, not a lot but it all counts.

Security guards: They patrol the park looking for any trouble makers and they evict them from the park keeping the good customers happy. You can now build security cameras that help the guards do their job as it is costly to employ enough security to cover your whole park. Again these guys only have one look but I like the way that they put people in a sack before throwing them out the park.

Entertainers: These are tailored to the land in which you are playing; Halloween land has Frankenstein, hunch-back and Dracula people where as Dinosaur land has Dinosaurs, Hunters, and Tribal people. These workers keep the customers happy by patrolling their area and doing their stuff when they come across a customer to keep them happy. I like the way that each land has 3 looks for entertainers and they really do a lot towards customer happiness plus they aren?t to expensive to keep.

Researchers: These are the brains in my mind to the park they research new rides. They are the most expensive employees to keep but you can use the menus to pick how hard they work. The harder they work the quicker they researcher but they need more breaks and will get tired quicker. Again there is only one kind of look for these people.

Training: If you wish to improve your staff then you can invest money into the individual types of your employees and this money will turn into higher skill levels which will make them more efficient resulting in a smoother running park. So you can either pay a high salary for an instant good skill which I do or employee lower paid workers then train them up yourself.

I really like the staff now I think they have been done well each seems to work at their job we
ll. Just remember to build a staff room because they employees now get tired and will need breaks from time to time. I like the skill based workers it gives you a lot of choice of how you would like to run your park.

Researching:
If you want new rides in the original you set money towards research in the area you wanted it and that would determine how much and fast research got done. Now you employ researchers you have the same options which they research but if you want to speed up research then you hire more researchers.

Use researching to get new shops, sideshows, features, rides, upgrades for rides. You select how much they look into each one using the slider.

Ride Upgrades:
Once you have researched into a ride upgrade you can install it using the ride menu and calling a mechanic it will make the ride more exciting and reliable.

Money:
Different ways to get money in, from shops, from gate sales or from challenges. But you can also get money from loans when the going gets tough, a menu with a selection of loan amounts and types appear that you can select the best option for you normally trying to find the amount of money you need with the least interest rates on it.

Tips:
Toilets by the exits of the exciting rides as customers like to puke after them will help to keep your park clean.

Bins either side of a shop will encourage the customers to put their rubbish in the bins and keep the work load of your cleaners and keep them and the customers happy.

In shops set the quality to the highest and ask only for a 5 profit per item, this should keep the balance right.

Watch your investment in staff training and this can prove to be a big drain on resources but if you can afford it is really is a great investment and will pay you back in major dividends.

When researching it is sometimes so easy to i
nvest heavily in new rides and not upgrades but non-upgraded rides break down a lot of are not that exciting so take the time to look into upgrades in a serious matter.

Overall:
I really enjoy this game I think it is some simple fun it does not require great thought into the game but it does require some. As you get more experience you will learn how to run a more efficient park taking you further into the game. I feel that there is great depth in the game and the game gets more difficult the more time you play as rides get more expensive and you have to control and curve your spending. If you think you have liked the sound of this review then you can pick this game up for ten pounds easily.

© David Clark ~ Electronics
(DavidJamesClark@hotmail.com)

Capital letters courtesy of: http://www.chuckleweb.co.uk/fixit.php

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