Roller Coaster Tycoon was originally released in 1999 and proved to be a very in-depth game that kept people addicted for hours on end. In 2002, we saw Roller Coaster Tycoon 2 released. The game was just as good as the first with new rides and features such as Roller Coaster Designer and Scenario Creator, but at the same time most people were disappointed about the lack of improvements to gameplay. Roller Coaster Tycoon 3 was released in 2004 and it offered you much more of a better feel than its predecessors. This is mainly with the new 3D engine which allowed players to view their parks in real-time 3D. Players could also ride their rides and experience the thrills of the roller Coasters by using what is called the Coaster Cam. This feature alone is worth getting this game for. There is also more detail to the guests or “peeps” in this game. There are different age groups which consists of young children, teenagers and adults. The guests also come in families or groups. New to this series is the sandbox mode where you build a park without any limitations, you have unlimited money and all the rides are available. The problem with this is that its not very challenging at all. For the first time in the series you get a day and night cycle. At night you can light the skies by creating firework displays. The interface for this is easy and you can set it to music that is included in the games selection of music. Alternatively you can make it more personalised by setting it to your own music that’s stored on your hard drive. My criticism of this feature is that there aren’t many types of fireworks so you may find it hard to create a firework display with any kind of variety. There is a major bug in this game where the guests will not ride your rides after a certain period of time. The good news is that you can repair this by downloading the patches or picking up a copy of the Soaked expansion pack. Another problem in this game is its overall performance. For some reason even on a very high end machine that well exceeds the recommended requirements, the game seems to really struggle. As your park gets bigger the frame-rate gets slower and there are sometimes frequent pauses. This is a shame because the game looks amazing when the graphical settings are set to high. But you do get used to the frame-rate after a bit. One more issue is when you construct elevated pathways it’s very fiddly and frustrating since you sometimes have to delete the whole thing and start again. Overall, this is a very entertaining and satisfying game especially to those who enjoyed the previous games. The graphics are impressive and the gameplay is addictive. Even with the games flaws this is still a very good game.
Roller Coaster Tycoon 3 is the one PC game that I can say I've really enjoyed (and wish I still had the disk so that I can download it again). RCT3 is the best tycoon game out there. Very few bugs, way too much fun, roll... Read Full Review
The first thing that strikes you about RC3 is the massive contast between it and it's predecessors. The whole game engine has been completely revamped and, whilst the core gameplay remains the same, everything around it ... Read Full Review
