

If you are close to going bankrupt (or if you need more money to build rides) you can take out a loan. You have so much to start with, and if you spend it all and go into the red for six months than you can be declared bankrupt. In fact, the only thing that you don't seem to be able to do is change the paintwork, which isn't a problem.īut back to those managerial elements. The attractions in the park can all be customised, you can change the rides' names, how fast they go, how many people they can carry etc, food prices can be changed as can fat content, quality of goods etc. Designing your own rides is pretty easy too, things like rollercoasters, log flumes and rapids have to be designed individually (a couple of ready-made coasters wouldn't have gone amiss), here you lay out the basic track (same principle as the paths) and then add the height and banking tracks etc afterwards. This is much easier than in RCT, where each section of path had to be laid down individually. However, laying out paths is very straightforward, click where you want one end of the path to be and then where you want the other, and a straight path will be drawn between the two points. The main problem is that rides can't be turned round, they all face one way, which is a little constricting in the whole designing process. The actual hands-on building of the park is a lot of fun, but marred by a few problems. There are other managerial elements to the game that I'll get back to later. However, the staff have to be kept happy too, if you pay for some training they will be more efficient at their work and unless you build them a staffroom, so they can have a break, they might go on strike. Each category is important, the cleaners, mechanics, entertainers and security all make sure people are happy in the park, and the scientists research new rides, sideshows etc. In order to develop and run your park, you need to employ some staff. I won two in five minutes for earning so much money in a certain space of time, but I had no idea that I had been attempting this. Every so often, you'll be informed that you are close to winning one, if you can just squeeze in a few more visitors (a fire hazard, surely), but apart from that, the tickets appear sporadically and without warning. However, there is no clear route to winning the tickets. In turn, these golden keys allow you access to the two parks unavailable at the beginning of the game. Your overall aim is to earn golden tickets, which you can exchange for new rides (that wouldn't have been researched by your scientists) and golden keys. Whereas in RCT you had to attract so many visitors or earn so much money, here you are left without a specific purpose. There doesn't seem to be any real aim in building the parks. For example, there is a standard "bouncy castle" ride in each park in the Lost World, it is a bouncy dinosaur and in the Haunted House, it is a bouncy brain. Each park is set around a certain theme, Lost World, Haunted House, WonderLand and Space, and the rides and features all correspond to this theme.

EA are, however, planning add-ons to increase this number. Although the parks take a while to complete, I think that four is a rather small number for the game to ship with (compared with 21 in RollerCoaster Tycoon). The others are dependent on you gaining a certain number of golden keys (which you earn by building impressive rides and attracting so many visitors to your park etc). There are four theme parks that can be built, but you can only access two of them to start with. You do this by building rides, sideshows, shops and features (plants, toilets, bins etc), some of which have already been designed and some of which can be researched by your scientists - should you employ any. OK, basic premise is you have to create a theme park. Whilst there are some problems / annoying little asides with the game, there are some great ideas too. I couldn't help but compare the title to Hasbro's Rollercoaster Tycoon, and let me tell you, it measures up quite well. Theme Park World is the sequel to Theme Park (surprise) and is the latest game to be released by EA's Bullfrog. So naturally, in games like Theme Park World, the log flume is always the most daring and exciting ride in my park. Fast forward 18 years, and now I'm the first one in line for all the rollercoasters, complaining if they don't do enough loops, don't go fast enough.but I still hate that log flume. All the waiting and the excitement.and I hated it. The log-flume had just opened and we queued for hours to get on it. I remember going to Alton Towers when I was five.
