Theme Park World

Has anyone played it? With all the buzz about RCT around here, I would figure someone has played it. It looks a little cheesy to me, but the fact you can ride the coasters you've built is a nice feature (hint hint, Chris Sawyer). Or maybe the ride your own creations isn't all it's cracked up to be?

Anyway, comments? *** Edited 12/5/2003 11:34:47 PM UTC by Danimales***

The games pretty old now and was on the bargain shelves a few weeks after its release. Being able to ride your own rides is cool, but when the rides look like they came out of a cheap cartoon the novelty soon wears off. I think I played it for about 4 hours and got bored.

Yeah, I knew it was old, just wondering why it never caught on the way RCT did.

I think Grant answered your question. I played it for more like 8 hours though. It is my opinion that it put too much emphasis on micromanagement and not enough focus on macromanagement.

The rollercoaster design tool stunk. There was no challenge to it. If a hill was too high it just added a lift hill automatically, and people would ride it no matter how bad it was. There was also no code to check for clearances with other attractions so it would often allow rides to pass right through shops.

I also could not stand the amount of micromanagement that was needed. There was no way to provide for inspections. You had to tell you mechanics to go fix the ride even though it was not broken. This would cause the ride to be closed until the mechanic got there and fixed it. If you didn't have the mechanic fix it then it would fail catastrophically. You also had to tell your cleaners to clean the restrooms and that would cause them to be closed until they were cleaned. After you built up the park nicely, you would find yourself doing nothing but going from ride to ride and restroom to restroom telling your staff to perform maintenance, and that just wasn't fun anymore. Also I found the flat landscape very boring and did not allow for tunneling and other neat features and challenges that RCT has. I will gladly give up the ability to ride my creations if it means not having to close my ride after two runs just so that I can tell a mechanic to go fix it.

I have not played Theme Park World but I have played the original, Theme Park. The only reason I got enjoyment out of it was because I was so young and did not know about any other games.Oh yeah, and I didn't buy it, I got it as a gift from my aunt.

There was also the sequal, don't forget... called Sim Coaster, which added a lot to the game. It helped focus a little more on the coaster building aspect (of which RCT2 borrowed, where you build the coaster seperately from the game).

...BUT, like the first... the flaws seemed to over-ride the good points. Don't get me wrong, I bought both games because I love theme-park games that are halfway decent... but I didn't buy it for the coaster building... I bought it because of the theme-park management aspect.

It had decent graphics & I liked how you could walk around your park... but it could have used a lot more polish, as the game stuttered a lot unless you had a high-end graphics/CPU chip. Problem is... the longeitivy of the game isn't NEAR the longeitivy as RCT is... because it just simply isn't as fun nor addictive.

There is a website, but I forget it, that you can download a patch to ride your RCT 1 and 2 creations. IF ANYONE HAS IT, IT WOULD BE VERY MUCH APPRECIATED.

I've got both sim theme park & sim coaster & they both stink big time.

When I recieved simcoaster I never even bothered installing it because I knew that it would be just as much of a dissappointment as STP was.