Gameplay: This game boasts a very easy to use interface, and guarentees that you will be building roller coasters in minutes. The game comes with it's own tutorial and has a description of every button if you hold clicker over one. The game runs very smoothly...until you expand your park to the far reaches of the map. Speaking of the map, this game is in the SimCity format, with tiles you place things in. Some large things can take 8 square tiles, and roller coaster track comes in the tile dimensions. The map you can build on is extremely large, the park's boundaries never touch the edge so it looks right. The one problem with this game is the slow pace. I often found myself leaving thekeyboard for an hour while my money slowly rolled in. I guess that's what it's like in real-life though. The graphics aren't photo-realistic, but they are very nice and clean. The trees lok great and the land is for the most part natural-looking. No problems there. You can't set hotkeys, which is a little annoying, but then again it doesn't really matter unless you live by hotkeys.

Plot: This plot is a little different from the rest; you have to build and maintain a sucessful amusement park and have enough guests in your park by a certain year to suceed. The plot doesn't flow from level to level like a story being told, though.

Originality: This game is very original, although using the same setup as a lot of other games, the topic was totally different. It was the first game I had ever heard of that had you build roller coasters and maintain a living theme park at the same time.

Addictiveness (Fun): Drink the coffee and be ready to pay that huge electric bill! Once you start, you can't stop playing this game. Always concerned about the deadline, but at the same time trying to keep guests happy proved to be a great mix of tension and entertainment. There were countless times when I started playing at 9:00 and then looked at the clock "a moment later" and relaized it was 1:00! Even now, after playing for about a year or 2, I get hoked on it.

Variety: There are lots of different types of roller coasters you can build in thes game, and even more gentle rides, water rides, thrill rides, and stalls. Each ride comes with a few options to customize it, you can pick the type of cars you want to use for your roller coasters, and you can paint the rides dfferent colors. You can name rides, put out an advertising campaign for a ride, even crash it. You also have a lot of different scenery. There are only 4 types of paths you can use and a few ground types, which get old a little fast, but other than that, there would be no 2 parks that are alike.

Satisfaction: When you complete a scenario and get a brand new one, you are definately satisfied. When you build a great roller coaster that is just under the intensity limit, you are really satisfied. Lots of little things satisfy you in this game. The only problem is that there is no reward for beating every scenaro (besides another park). That really is a big letdown. I thought there would be something cool, some cheats, something the whole game through, then I did it and was like "oh. i beat everything. ok."

Challenge: I don't know if it was just me, but every scenario was easy. Sure, you are satisfied, but all you had to do was build a beginning, wait for your money to come back and research to give you new rides, build more, and continue to do this until you beat it. Maybe I'm some special roller coaster builder, but there was barely a challenge for me.

Misc: A cool thinkg in this game was the ability to read other people's thought's. There were many different thoughts, too. From "This park is clean and tidy" to "I feel sick" to "That roller coaster is way to intense for me". Another neat thing is the amount of indiviual people. I think I've had 4,000 people in a park at once, all moving their own paths and thinking their own thuoghts. Very nice. The bad thing is that the time is too slow. I mean, the rate of time was fine, but when you wanted to fast forward a little (at yuor own expense; throw up uncleaned if not enought handymen etc...) you couldn't.

Multi-Player

There is no multiplayer to this game. That may seem bad, but really, there is nothing to do with more than one person.

Conclusion

Score:90/100