Roller Coaster Tycoon 3

[Iron Draggon]

OMG, this is the most badass game ever made! I just got it, and I must say that it has exceeded all of my hopes and expectations in every way possible! Forget the XBOX, forget the PS2, forget the Gamecube, forget everything, this game makes the best game that you've ever seen on any of the current consoles look like an old school retro classic! Yes, it really looks that good!

First of all, the packaging. You would think that this was some sort of ultra limited edition import game or something, I've never even seen a domestic PC game that was packaged this nicely before. The box has a 3D cover that moves the scene as you move it around. Not a holographic cover, but one of those old-style 3D techniques like the cover of Pac Man 2, if you remember it. Inside the box, you get a very impressive CD holder with a large storage slot for the very thick and very nicely spiral bound manual. The only thing that could've been nicer about it would've been if the pages of the manual were all in color. But at least the front and back covers of it are in color.

Now on to the disk itself. A full version of Microsoft Windows Photo Story 3 is included, to help you make cool slideshows of all the screenshots that you can take in the game. You can also record movies while you're in the game. And you have tons of different camera views to choose from, complete with all the controls you need to customize any scene to your liking, on the fly.

Meanwhile, you can choose from a very nice selection of MP3 background music, or import your own to listen to. You can also import your own MP3's for use as soundtracks or sound effects for your rides. So you have just as much control over all the sounds as you do over all the sights. Sweet music!

OK, now on to the actual gameplay. It has everything that RCT fans have been having wet dreams about ever since the first RCT came out in 1999. A sandbox mode, a scenario editor, a ride editor, and even a fireworks display editor! Long gone are the days of only being able to play just the scenarios that game with the game, and better yet, even longer gone are the days of not being able to ride any of the rides! Now you can ride all of the rides in fullscreen first person 3D! And I don't mean with Sim Theme Park graphics, I mean with better than Rail Road Tycoon 3 graphics! My wish has finally been granted, and RCT3 makes RRT3 look like the original RCT by comparison!

So if you loved the first game, and even if you didn't, this game simply must be experienced! It doesn't matter if you're a card carrying coaster junkie like me or not, this is the sweetest game that you will ever play on a PC in your life! If you have a MAC, start bitching for a MAC version ASAP, because this game definitely deserves to be ported to the MAC! And I'm usually a MAC Hater! That's right, it's so great that I'd hate to see anybody have to miss out on it, even all you dazed and confused MAC users who shoudl've bought a PC! Now that's a game, folks! RCT3 is the game to end all games for sure!

[mikeetler]

I have to agree 100%. I've been hugely addicted to the RCT series since it was first released and couldn't wait for this to come out. Since my graphics card was old I plunked down $100 for a Radeon 9200 just to play this game. I will most likely be replacing the motherboard and processor soon to get the full effect, since I have an old Slot A board which can olny get me up to an Athlon 1 GHz. I can't think of another game that I would consider upgrading a PC for.

-Mike

[slip81]

I was never a huge fan of the RCT series, but this one sounds interesting. Thankfully my girlfriend really likes the series so she will probably end up getting it so I don't have to spend the money. But right now she's hooked on Sims 2 so it'll be a while.

[goatdan]

I love the series, but I've been a little disillusioned by their add on mission packs from the last two. You'd buy the game, and then there would be another mission pack out in three months. One month after that, a third mission pack would come out that would include the second for free, but would then cost more...

I will be getting the game, but I'm just not sure how long it will take. Your reveiw makes me want it sooner though :)

[scooterb23]

and RCT3 makes RRT3 look like the original RCT by comparison!

*head melts*

I shall be buying this game as soon as I have over $0.39 in the bank...

[Iron Draggon]

Coaster sims are the only PC games that I will always pay full price for on the day they're released, no matter how much they cost. It's true that within a year they'll release a deluxe edition that includes the original game and both expansion packs for the same price or less, but I just can't wait that long for a new coaster sim. They're way too few and far between these days. So I will be getting both expansion packs as soon as they come out too, and I can hardly wait for them to come out. Every RCT fan knows that there will be 2 expansion packs for it within a year, but most of us just can't wait until the deluxe edition comes out to get it, so they have all us coaster nuts by the balls for sure! That's why I still can't believe that we're getting so much for so little this time. I would gladly pay $60 for this game, as nice as it is, so it really seems to be a great value for what you get, even at $40 for it all.

I'm very disappointed with the way that they're handling all the bonus items for it though. Most major retailers were supposed to get preorder boxes for it back in September, and each one was supposed to contain a code for an exclusive ride that you could only get by preordering the game from that retailer. Each code was supposed to let you download 3 coasters. 2 of them were all the same, no matter where you bought it, but the 3rd one was an exclusive. Best Buy got a woodie, Gamestop got a gigacoaster, and EB got the best one, a B&M style inverted similar to Nemesis but bigger and with more inversions. However, the whole idea has turned out to be a collosal fiasco. Some stores never got any preorder boxes at all, other stores got the boxes but they didn't contain the codes like they were supposed to, and all the stores that did get the boxes that had the codes in them didn't have the correct codes in them so the codes didn't work. So it just became a complete waste of time, and it was all really pointless anyhow, because every RCT fansite on the net is gonna have all 3 exclusive rides plus the 2 that every retailer had in common hosted on their sites in nothing flat anyway!

I'm also very disappointed with the way that they're handling the strategy guide for it. It's supposed to contain some codes for even more bonus stuff, 4 coasters, 2 scenarios, 3 fireworks shows, and 5 buildings. But it costs $20! And it's not gonna take very long for all of that stuff to appear on every RCT fansite on the net either, so all of that is pretty pointless too. Just include all the extra goodies with the game no matter where you buy it from and be done with it, because all the coaster nuts are gonna find it all and expose all the secrets and share everything with the rest of the world just as soon as they can anyway, so what's the point of all this "exclusive" stuff that can all be had without buying anything but a copy of the game anyhow? It's stupid!

But all that aside, I forgot to mention that you also get a coupon for a $20 rebate on any ATI Radeon graphics card. So if you need a new card to be able to play it, and you're planning to go with ATI, then go ahead and get the game before you get the card, or get the game and the card at the same time, so you can send off for your $20 rebate ASAP. But that seems kinda crappy too. First of all, only $20 off a $200 - $500 graphics card isn't very much of a rebate. It should be more like a $50 rebate at least, but at least they are offering $20, so that's still good news if you need a new card. But then they also include an insert that tells you about the strategy guide, but they don't give you a coupon for anything towards your purchase of that, and I think that they could've at least offered $5 off or a $5 rebate for that, because the book costs $20! So if you need a new graphics card, then you can get the strategy guide for free, if that's what you spend your $20 on, but all the rest of us who don't even need a new card don't get any money back on anything, so that seems kinda rude. But you still get alot!

Another thing that I forgot to mention is the peep designer. You can design your own characters to walk around in your parks, and you can control them and see everything from their perspective too, so it has alot of elements of games like The Sims in it as well. The peeps are very intelligent compared to their counterparts in all the earlier games, and they have alot of different animations for expressions on their faces and alot of other things that they do. They're very dynamic, and they do all the same sort of things that Sims do, make friends, fall in love, develop family ties, etc. So there's really just an incredible amount of detail in the game and all kinds of stuff going on. Plus, there's finally lots of different lighting for various times of the day, so we can finally watch all the lights coming on as it gets dark, and see all the sparkle and razzle-dazzle of our amusement parks at night! It's almost too much to even be believed, compared to all the RCT games that came before it, and that's still not all! We can import most of our old rides from RCT1 & RCT2 also! Only the coasters I think, and some of them won't work, but still, the fact that it's at least partially backwards compatible with all the other RCT games is amazing! So I'm really very surprised that it all fits on only one CD!

Sorry for the length of my posts about it, but we're talking about my #1 favorite genre here, and this game just became my #1 favorite game of all time overnight! The only thing that could make it any better for me would be if I knew enough about 3D modeling to make my own models for it. It's supposed to be fully moddable, from what I've heard, but I can only do basic texture mods and simple hacks, I can't make a 3D model to save my life, and I don't know enough about coding in any language to write anything really impressive for this game. But I'm still gonna see what I can do with it, so maybe I can hook up with a good team of other modders and work some magic of my own for it, like I did with the Ultimate Ride series. I already have a series of texture mods in mind, so if you're a modder and a coaster sim nut too, then hit me up with a PM! If this game really is moddable, then I really am gonna be in heaven! BTW, here's a link to all my UR mods and rides, if you have any of those games and you wanna see what I've done with them:

http://www.gayrollerride.com/urdownloads.html

[Raedon]

RCT1 was amazing. I like RTC3 for what it tries to be, a RCT1 with 3D. It's a super fast engine but the gameplay is getting stale.

[whoisKeel]

oh boy, i was really hooked on the first one for awhile, and played a good bit of the second one. i'll have to pick this up...

from what i saw of the screenshots a few months ago, it looked a little dated...but you're saying the graphics are top notch? i'll have to give this one a go for sure.

[Iron Draggon]

I think that the graphics are very good, considering the depth of the game, and how many things are going on in it. It could look alot better, but then you'd need a much better computer to run it, and all the low end users are having a really hard time with it as it is. It looks really good to me, because I'm playing it on a midrange system, (That was a dream system a year ago!) so fortunately I haven't been experiencing any problems while running it yet.

BTW, I have all 3 of the "exclusive" preorder bonus rides now, as well as all of the "exclusive" bonus content from the strategy guide. So that worked out just like I thought it would, there was no point in Atari even doing that at all, and they might as well have just put all that stuff in the game on the CD anyway. You just can't hide stuff like this from us coaster nuts, because we'll always find a way to get it all, and we'll always get it all for free too!

It only took me one post on Atari's official message boards for the game and less than 24 hours of waiting for responses to find all the information that I needed to download every single bit of the "exclusive" bonus content for free, so the whole thing is just a joke, and a collosal waste of Atari's time!

The only thing that I haven't found out yet is if I can host it all on my own website without any problems over it. So as soon as I know that for sure, if I get a green light on it, then I'll have it all available for download on my site!

Meanwhile, anybody who wants it or needs it, just send me a PM and I'll hook you up with all the "exclusive" bonus goodies! HA! Take that, Atari!

[goatdan]

Iron Draggon, while I am probably just as big of a coaster nut as you, I found that part of my love for amusement parks is what made me "fall out" with the first few games. Here are some examples of stuff that I didn't like:

- You would often get about 20 or 30 different types of coasters to build, but less than 30 flat rides total per scenario. There are so many different flat rides in the world, and a good "real" amusement park starts off with a few flats and then get a roller coaster or two, and then upgrade from there. Sometimes, they'll start with a relatively small collection of flat rides and get one big ride to suddenly make a splash. Every Roller Coaster Tycoon game has you designing coasters right off the bat, with flats taking a distant, distant second place.

Along with this complaint, a lot of the flat rides lost their popularity way too fast while the coasters kept them forever. I live close to Six Flags Great America, and there are still tons of flat rides from the year the park opened... and they are still just as popular as they were then. On the other hand, the roller coasters that have stuck around haven't all faired so well.

- Where were the games? Even Theme Park included games for people to play, and they allowed you to adjust the winning percentage and cost. The fact that games didn't exist was weird.

- No sit down restaraunts. Again, what the heck? To build a place to eat and drink, you picked your one type of food and built a stand and one type of drink. If you wanted more than that, you had to add more restaraunts. Why didn't any of the burger joints or whatever also sell soda? That only makes sense.

- No First Aid, Lost and Found, Expansion of the Gates and Season Pass sales. Again, all stuff that probably could have and should have been included in some form, but weren't for whatever reason.

- Coaster Intensity was off. I made some rides that in the "real world" would be very popular, but in the game were too intense. Any ride with more than a few inversions happening one right after another (B&M Loopers, B&M Inverts, Arrow MegaLoopers) got insane ratings and no one would ride them.

- The first game didn't feature coaster block brakes. The second one featured them in a way that was about as unrealistic as it gets. First of all, coasters don't necessarily slow down through block brakes. They did. All of them. On top of that, you couldn't stack trains before the station. If you had a long station, it could only fit one train. I think that this problem really comes down to the fact that it isn't widely understood how block brakes operate (even amongst coaster enthusiasts), and therefore the simulation of them has to be broken down to a much simpler idea so that they are usable... but they really killed the fun of making some of the coasters for me.

- Lastly, the theming aspect of the games was completely overshadowed. Theming cost so much and was so time consuming, and rarely changed the Guest's opinions of the park enough to make a major impact. If you could theme your park to have different lands (Dinosaur Land, Space Land, etc.) the Guests should've been able to recognize that. Instead, they recognized stuff like flowers sometimes, but if you spent $5000 theming a ride, they wouldn't think that it was all very cool. I personally love themed rides, but doing it in the game was just a waste of time it seems.

Overall, even with these gripes I can't say that I didn't like the games. I played them both more than just about any other game during the last few years and have enjoyed them immensely. I just wish that they went that extra step. Also, considering I know about the packs and how they are released, and I'm desperately attempting to get through about 20 different games on different consoles right now, I don't need to add anything else to the mix.

Thanks for the reviews though. It's good to know someone else enjoys coasters and games too ;)

[Iron Draggon]

COOL! Maybe I should start a thread to gather up all the other coaster nuts here, but then I'd think that this one would do it, so maybe there's no point.

Anyhow, I agree that the selection of flat rides in the RCT series has always been extremly disappointing, and RCT3 is unfortunately no exception to that trend. The ones that are included are extremely impressive, and riding them in first person is a joy that was long overdue, but for some stupid reason they apparently felt that it was more important to have a couple of different versions of the exact same ride than it was to have a selection of flat rides that were all different and thus more representational of the overwhelming variety of flat rides available in the real world! So instead of getting some of the other flats that are still very sadly missing from the lineup, we got two different versions of many of what was already included, obviously because it was easier to just slap a new theme on an existing ride than it was to create another one from scratch. So I'm very disappointed about that too myself.

Hopefully there will be alot more new flat rides in the inevitable addons that really are new rides, and not just re-themed versions of existing rides, as was the case with most of the content in all the addons for RCT2. I don't really expect it, but I'm still hoping for it, because I agree that it's insane to have so many different coaster types from past, present, and future, while the selection of flat rides doesn't even compare favorably to the typical carnival.

Living here in Houston, I'm fortunate enough to experience most of the best flat rides at least once a year, when the rodeo comes to town. Their midway has always ben a showcase for the best of the best, so there's very few flat rides that I've yet to experience, although unfortunately there's still dozens that I've yet to try that I'd really like to get to take a few spins on.

And I'm also fortunate enough to know first hand what the world's only S&S Sky Swatter is like, since I live here, so it would've been very nice if they had included one of those in the game too, for those who aren't as fortunate as I am. I thought that it was very likely to be included, since it's one of the newest of the new flat rides, but like you said the focus is much more on the coasters than anything else, although I wouldn't say that's a bad thing.

As it is, RCT3 lets you build and ride far more coaster types than any of the other coaster sims do, with many of them being the very first time that these types of coasters have been simulated in 3D. So I have to give it major props for that, and for the editor, which is complex enough to make most layouts possible, yet simple enough that I don't need a college degree in CAD to figure out how to build something with it. Prior to RCT3, the only other games that I could build a thing with were the Ultimate Ride series or the Roller Coaster Factory series, because No Limits, Scream Machines, and Hyper Rails are just way too complicated for me, and way more time than I wanna spend working on a layout. I still like the UR series alot better in most ways, especially for it's editor, but the editor in RCT3 is the next best thing. It's just sad that they didn't see fit to make their pieces modifiable, like the ones in the UR series are. That would've made it alot easier to finish your layouts, but that's my biggest gripe with the RCT3 editor, it's just too hard to get your pieces lined up properly at the end, so you can finish your layout.

But like you, I lost most of my interest in the RCT series as soon as all the 3D coaster sims started coming out. I'm really only getting into playing RCT3 because we can finally ride the rides now. If it had been yet another rehash of the same old thing, then it would've ended up just like all the other ones have for me lately. I'd install it, take a quick look around at it, and then put it on the shelf, never to even be thought of again, much less actually played.

So what I'm looking forward to is seeing if it actually continues to evolve like it should, and redefine the genre again. If this game would really catch on like it should, then we should start seeing a new barrage of new coaster sims again, which hasn't happened since the UR series died and all the fanboy sims like NL, SM, and HR came out. Pretty much all the hardcore nuts play NL & SM & maybe HR, and the rest of us play UR. But most of the UR nuts are already hanging out on the RCT3 boards, because the only new stuff that we can even hope for in the future of UR is whatever all us UR modders are creating. Disney abandoned it like the sinking ship that it was before this game came out, but the sad thing is, if they had stuck with it, they could probably give it a real run for it's money now! So it's gonna be UR & RCT3 for me until something else comes out. I just hope that it happens soon, and it isn't yet another impossible to master CAD based sim that's only good for letting me ride whatever other people create. Because that's all that I use NL, SM, and HR for, and I'd much rather be able to make my own rides too!

I do wish that they had made RCT3 as easy to mod as the UR series though. I'm still not enough of a hacker to know how to do very much, and what I've seen of the file structure and formats so far looks like there's nothing that I can do with any of it at all, unless I learn how to hack it all somehow. So I'm still stuck with just modding UR games, and I still can't really do very much of anything new with it either, unless I learn how to make my own 3D models. And I've already tried doing that and decided that it's never gonna happen, because it's just far too complicated and time consuming for me. Just like trying to build a ride with one of those CAD based editors. Forget it!

Oh well, at least I finally have a new coaster sim to tinker around with that I can actually build a ride with now! So I'll be doing that alot, at the very least!

[Queen Of The Felines]

Oh man, I wish I had a desktop PC so I could upgrade and play this thing! :(

* Throws laptop across the room *

Kristine

[SoulBlazer]

NO!

(dives to save laptop)

Whoa! I know these things suck as gaming machines, but they still have MANY good uses! ;)

[goatdan]

Well, I actually didn't end up with the 3D simulators as much as even I thought I would have when they came out -- my favorite game genre is strategy, and I love roller coasters, so it should just follow that the RCT games were the ultimate...

But I lost hope after the second games add-on packs featured nothing but more variations of roller coasters. If the scenarios matched a time period, I could see how you could build a Virginia Reel or a Side Friction coaster, but why those were even options in the past two games was beyond me. If they were to be included, they should have been SO expensive that no one would have built them -- that would've been realistic. Instead, most of my parks ended up with at least one Virginia Reel.

The problem that I had with RCT as a series is that it became more about making the roller coasters than it did about strategizing on how to run the park -- in doing so, it lessed my favorite elements and replaced it with something that a whole host of games did better (and while I'm on the topic, find the game "Disney's Coaster" (DOS / Win 3.1) and play that for a while. I don't understand why no other coaster sim has taken the route of having people review it at the end. Coaster was simple, but it was a HELL of a good time. I spent more time on that game than I can remember.)

The coaster nut in me wants to run out, grab RCT3 and start building rides, but the strategy nut in me knows that without the rest of the park being as solid as the rides, the games have become rather bland for me. I want to think about how to run a real life amusement park -- build less coasters a year, run shows, run games, make more realistic food courts, focus on theming and so on.

The other thing stopping the coaster nut part of me is the whole block brake thing. While this may sound really stupid, I watched in RCT1 where coasters constantly hit eachother and exploded and hated it and then saw the completely flawed system for roller coaster block management in RCT2. The block creation in it is SO flawed that you couldn't put them in the middle of the ride as they would always slow it so much, and you couldn't make a decent brake run as the computer couldn't handle it right. Like I said, this is a very minor thing to a lot of people, but the thing that I like the most about coasters is seeing them operate, and after having spent more time than I care to recall with them and seeing exactly how it does work, having it so wrong in the game really bothered me.

Lastly, like I said, the intensity thing... The park nearest to me is Six Flags Great America, and as many people do, in RCT I decided to make some rides that were relatively similar to the rides there. I made a Raging Bull clone (210 ft tall B&M Hyper-Twister) that drew an intensity of about 9.00 and no one rode. The real life one is five years old and always has an hour line. I made a Shockwave clone (now-closed Arrow MegaLooper) and it had an intensity of 13 something. Lastly, I made a Batman clone that included theming, and that got an intensity ranking of higher than the Shockwave ranking. Considering that Batman is now 12 years old and still regularly gets a two hour line, I found it funny that not ONE person would ride it.

I also made a clone of Mr. Freeze, a ride that I love. Not just did the game not want me to do it (the track it too tall!) but once it was complete, it was too intense for anyone to ride.

But every time I made a shuttle loop, people would pay $7.50 per ride and it would gross over $10,000 a year... more than all of those other, much more expensive rides put together. Same thing with boomerangs.

I'm not trying to tear the game to shreds. I'm actually hoping (and your review gives me much, MUCH more hope) that RCT3 is much improved in those areas. And like you said, you can ride everything. That will definitely give me something to do :) In fact, I'll get to ride some flats now that I could never do in real life because of their intensity.

The games have definitely been fun overall, it is just that either the next game in the series will patch the holes that I talked about, or another game will come along and challenge it, and then I'll never leave my computer (my poor wife ;) ). Thanks for the review, and you have definitely convinced me to pick it up, even if I do sound rather negative :)

[Iron Draggon]

Oh boy, you & I are true coaster nuts alright, just look at the length of our posts! You make alot of points here, so I'm gonna have to start quoting:



Well, I actually didn't end up with the 3D simulators as much as even I thought I would have when they came out -- my favorite game genre is strategy, and I love roller coasters, so it should just follow that the RCT games were the ultimate...

But I lost hope after the second games add-on packs featured nothing but more variations of roller coasters. If the scenarios matched a time period, I could see how you could build a Virginia Reel or a Side Friction coaster, but why those were even options in the past two games was beyond me. If they were to be included, they should have been SO expensive that no one would have built them -- that would've been realistic. Instead, most of my parks ended up with at least one Virginia Reel.

Well I dunno about the Virginia Reel, but there is one Side Friction coaster still surviving today, somewhere in Pennsylvania I believe. It was restored fairly recently, and at tremendous expense, so that would make it seem more realistic for them to be very expensive, but surely it wouldn't be as expensive to build a new one from scratch as it would be to restore one. Maybe it would, I dunno, but I find it rather hard to believe that rides from the depression era would be too prohibitively expensive for us to build today. If inflation has really made that the case, then we do live in some very sad times, but at least our coaster technologies have advanced tremendously!



The problem that I had with RCT as a series is that it became more about making the roller coasters than it did about strategizing on how to run the park -- in doing so, it lessed my favorite elements and replaced it with something that a whole host of games did better (and while I'm on the topic, find the game "Disney's Coaster" (DOS / Win 3.1) and play that for a while. I don't understand why no other coaster sim has taken the route of having people review it at the end. Coaster was simple, but it was a HELL of a good time. I spent more time on that game than I can remember.)

Actually, Disney's Coaster was the very first coaster sim that I ever played, and rightfully so, since it was also the very first coaster sim ever made. But unfortunately, my retail copy must've fallen by the wayside somehow, so I don't have a nice boxed copy of it for my collection anymore. I wish I did, but at least I was able to download it from an abandonware site, so I still play it. Interestingly enough, it's the only DOS game that I can get to run on XP too, although without any sound. So fortunately for me, I can still play the one DOS game that I most want to play on XP. And it's still alot of fun!

Anyhow, there is one other coaster sim that lets you have a panel of judges review your rides at the end. Are you ready for this? Ultimate Ride Disney Coaster, the third game in the Ultimate Ride series. If you get it, make sure that you also get Ultimate Ride Coaster Deluxe, the second game in the series, because those two are pretty much worthless without each other, but together they're pure MAGIC! You don't need the original Ultimate Ride though, because everything in that game is included in the second game.

You can even make your own judges for it, and I've done so myself, but it's a rather complicated process that takes at least a very basic knowledge of modding to do it. I have all the tools for doing it on my website though, so if you wanna try it, just download the Adjudicator tool & the Text Map Editor tool and give it a shot. I also have a few judges of my own that I've made, so you can help yourself to those also. The game comes with a small panel of judges to choose from, and some of the other UR modders besides myself have made a few too, so we did alot more with it than Disney themselves ever did. They promised us that there would be more judges to download in the future, but they didn't tell us that they were just gonna rely on all the modders to make them! So we kinda got cheated on that, but whatever.

http://www.gayrollerride.com/urdownloads.html

That's where all the tools that you'll ever need for making your own judges or otherwise modding UR in some way are located, along with all my mods and all my rides, so if you do get URCD & URDC then you'll have everything you'll ever need for them right there. There's another site for UR players and modders still around that has alot of great stuff too, and they can answer all your questions about making your own judges or anything else to do with modding UR that you might wanna know, so be sure to check them out too.

http://www.modstothemax.net

Be aware that most of the people there have alot of attitude though. Not at first usually, but once you get to know them all, you'll see that they're a very anal bunch of people, which is why I don't even hang out with them anymore. I got tired of them banning me for no reason at all, other than their own anal retentiveness, so that's why I spend all my time here now.



The coaster nut in me wants to run out, grab RCT3 and start building rides, but the strategy nut in me knows that without the rest of the park being as solid as the rides, the games have become rather bland for me. I want to think about how to run a real life amusement park -- build less coasters a year, run shows, run games, make more realistic food courts, focus on theming and so on.

The game does include shows now, but unfortunately no games yet, and the food stalls are still the same as they always were, as far as I know. But the micromanagement is ALOT more detailed than it was before. You have WAY more details to look after now, so for me it's a much bigger headache than I really wanna have to mess with, but for you it should be extremely welcome. I won't go into all the details that have been added, but trust me, it's NOT as relaxed as the other two games were. Everything is MUCH more realistic in that respect, so you should be alot happier with this installment.



The other thing stopping the coaster nut part of me is the whole block brake thing. While this may sound really stupid, I watched in RCT1 where coasters constantly hit eachother and exploded and hated it and then saw the completely flawed system for roller coaster block management in RCT2. The block creation in it is SO flawed that you couldn't put them in the middle of the ride as they would always slow it so much, and you couldn't make a decent brake run as the computer couldn't handle it right. Like I said, this is a very minor thing to a lot of people, but the thing that I like the most about coasters is seeing them operate, and after having spent more time than I care to recall with them and seeing exactly how it does work, having it so wrong in the game really bothered me.

This seems to have been addressed as well, but I'm not sure. The rides that I've ridden with block brakes seemed to function fairly realistically. You still can't "stack" your trains, as far as I know, so it's still not perfect yet, but it is alot better. And they're working on patches to address alot of the issues that people are bringing up about it, so you never know, they just might fix alot of the stiff that still needs fixing. They certainly seem to be alot more interested in listening to the players and giving them what they want, now that Chris Sawyer the anal probe is only indirectly involved with it. He was always the biggest problem with the series, so I'm glad that they finally got him to let go of the reigns a bit, and let somebody else try to do it right.



Lastly, like I said, the intensity thing... The park nearest to me is Six Flags Great America, and as many people do, in RCT I decided to make some rides that were relatively similar to the rides there. I made a Raging Bull clone (210 ft tall B&M Hyper-Twister) that drew an intensity of about 9.00 and no one rode. The real life one is five years old and always has an hour line. I made a Shockwave clone (now-closed Arrow MegaLooper) and it had an intensity of 13 something. Lastly, I made a Batman clone that included theming, and that got an intensity ranking of higher than the Shockwave ranking. Considering that Batman is now 12 years old and still regularly gets a two hour line, I found it funny that not ONE person would ride it.

I also made a clone of Mr. Freeze, a ride that I love. Not just did the game not want me to do it (the track it too tall!) but once it was complete, it was too intense for anyone to ride.

But every time I made a shuttle loop, people would pay $7.50 per ride and it would gross over $10,000 a year... more than all of those other, much more expensive rides put together. Same thing with boomerangs.

Well the peeps in this one seem to be alot more extreme, so they seem to be willing to ride alot of stuff that they would never ride before. And there's already some cheats available to make them ride whatever you want along with cheats for many other things, so there's no shortage of ways around little problems like this, as long as you don't mind doing a little cheating. I know you shouldn't have to cheat to play the game the way you want, but like I said it is alot better and they seem to be working on making it better still, so I wouldn't worry too much about it being very much like all the other RCT games. It's similar enough to resemble it's heritage, but that's about it.



I'm not trying to tear the game to shreds. I'm actually hoping (and your review gives me much, MUCH more hope) that RCT3 is much improved in those areas. And like you said, you can ride everything. That will definitely give me something to do :) In fact, I'll get to ride some flats now that I could never do in real life because of their intensity.

The games have definitely been fun overall, it is just that either the next game in the series will patch the holes that I talked about, or another game will come along and challenge it, and then I'll never leave my computer (my poor wife ;) ). Thanks for the review, and you have definitely convinced me to pick it up, even if I do sound rather negative :)

Kiss your wife goodbye, this game is gonna keep you busy for a long time!