And, ye gods, does
RCT have the gameplay! My young nephew and I stayed up until 4:00 a.m. one morning playing this game, and we only went to bed because he had to be somewhere at 9:00. It’s crack in computer-game format, and soon after you boot it up, you’ll be absorbed into the world of the roller coasters.
The game is presented as a series of scenarios, which generally start out easy and soon get more and more difficult. The first few scenarios limit your options, letting you build a few different types of rides and stands. As the game progresses, however, your researchers discover new things that you can build such as new rides or new additions to your rides (generally, the roller coasters). Usually, the object of a given scenario is to get a certain number of people into your park within a certain time-frame, with your park having above a given “ranking.” This ranking is a general indicator of how good your park is.
And you have control over everything. You put the paths, you build the rides, and you construct all the necessities for a good park -- bathrooms, food stalls, and whatnot. There are a ton of rides available, from the mundane (merry-go-rounds) to the insane (err... roller coasters).
And although you can do a whole lot of things with the other rides, it’s in the roller coasters that RCT really shines. You can either use pre-built roller coasters, which is for beginners, or you can construct your own. Each type of roller coaster (wooden, steel, suspended, etc.) has its own rules about how steep, sharp, and tall the rides can be. And once your roller coaster is complete, you can send it on a test run, which tells you just how cool it is. Every ride has three ratings -- Excitement, which increases with a solid presentation and advertising and whatnot, Intensity, which describes just how shocking the ride is, and Nausea, which is how sick the ride makes people. Although Excitement is a uniformly positive quality and you want to keep the Nausea rating down, Intensity is more difficult to pin down. Some people like low-intensity rides, while others are just the opposite. Once you can afford it, having different coasters and rides to suit different types of people is a Very Good Idea.
You also control the pricing on everything in your park, from the entrance fee to the price per ride (this isn’t a Pay One Price park, by default) to even setting prices for the bathrooms. Of course, you don’t have to charge for everything, and it’s smart to adjust prices as the game progresses. When rides are new, you can charge large amounts for them, but as they get older and the novelty wears off, the price must be reduced.
This sort of deep-level playing is what may scare some people away, but it’s the God Game way, and it draws just as many people to the game. You can check and see just what everyone in your park is thinking; find out if things are overpriced or underpriced. And there’s a lot more to the game, with handymen keeping things clean and mechanics keeping the rides smooth and entertainers and queue lines and lots and lots more.
The Loopy Landscapes add-on pack is actually a two-in-one deal: you also get the Corkscrew Follies add-on, which was released earlier. Both have a ton more scenarios, generally a lot more difficult than the ones in the original game. They have you doing really interesting things too like completing half-finished roller coasters and building on ice floes and more. As if the main game didn’t have enough playability, the two add-on packs will have you playing for another ungodly large number of hours.
Quick side note: RollerCoaster Tycoon: Loopy Landscape requires the original game, as it’s an expansion pack. However, this review incorporates both the original title and the expansion pack.
