Finally we can ride the rides!

My toddler son loves roller coasters and with the local parks closed for winter we fired up some computer games to play with. We played with Roller Coaster Tycoon 1 and 2 but he kept asking if we could ride the rides. I guess some other people asked also because that is the big improvement in Roller Coaster Tycoon 3.

The overall premise is still the same as the other two games (and the countless other "tycoon" games). You need to manage a business (in this case a theme park) to meet some success criteria. There is some micro management involved (like training your security guards or tweaking the price of hamburgers), but mostly the game is about the attractions. You can build a variety of things that you have seen at theme parks; roller coaters, ferris wheels, merry go rounds, slides, etc. The main thing is the larger attractions - roller coasters.

There are dozens of prebuilt (some based on real ones from Six Flags parks) but you also have the ability to make one from scratch. It can be a bit hard for a toddler, but with an adult you can have a lot of fun trying out numerous loops and twists. The simulation is pretty accurate, so you can design a bad coaster pretty easily (like one where the cars don't have enough momemtum to get back to the loading area). Luckily it is very easy to change some things, once you get a feel for the interface. There is a good tutorial on coaster construction and the plots can help you design more fun into the ride.

Once you have a coaster built you can then put yourself on the ride and see what your park attendees (peeps) get to experience. With some high horsepower computer hardware (mainly the graphic card) you can get some pretty cool effects. The night time rides are the best, with the coaster having headlights to light up only the front few feet of track. I think the program will go up to 1280x1024 and our ATI Radeon X800 card runs it fine with all the detail turned on. The 3D lights and shadows give the park a "real" feel but if you zoom extreemely close you can see some low polygon count in some items. Considering that you can zoom all the way out and see the entire park, it is actually amazing that you can zoom in and look at a person at all. You can follow a peep and have his thoughts displayed (like: I'm hungry, that ride is too expensive, boy is this park dirty, etc.). This can really help you tweak the park's infrastructure to keep everyone happy.

There is a sandbox mode which has unlimited money and is a great place to get the feel for coaster construction and park management without any pressure. My son and I created a very busy park with over 10 large coasters. He just loves to ride each ride and squeal with delight as I make sick faces during the inverted loops and corkscrews.

Overall this is a great game for fans of amusement parks.

Bradman