Theme Park World

"What to do? what to do? Buy a side show to get more money, or a new ride? Well, I'll buy a side show. But THAT won't bring in the punters, and they may feel cheated, on the other hand, it'll increse my already ailing bank account. I'll go with the ride, the kids won't be giving to me all their money, but they may buy things because they like the ride, but my cash is low, and if I buy a track ride I may go bankrupt, and the ride shall henceforth be known as Andrew's folly. If it's not a track ride, though I could buy it without losing all my money, but if the ride is crappy, It'll not bring the people in.

This is a small section of my thaughts while playing Theme Park World ('Sim Theme Park' in America, fact fans).

If you have played Constructor (review soon) you will know there are a lot of things going on at once. Theme Park World is like this, but not as intense. So after a few tries, and your park is running smoothly, you might want to have a go on a ride you have built. There is a small problem that may have looked good on the design sheet but notin practice. When you ride something the park life goes on with you. Nothing wrong with that you say, but when you are in the middle of a ride, and something goes wrong that only you can fix happens, you have to abandon the ride, and rectify the problem. Its also thouroghly annoying when you are on a ride, having the time of your life, when the wee Scottish advisor pops up to tell you that you did something (good or bad) and then for example, put on an Ade Edmunson (from Bottom and The Young Ones) voice and say something, yes, it is funny, but when he repeats it for the tenth time you just want to turn him off, but you can't because if you do, you miss pieces of important information.

Well, it does have good points, for example, the fact that people buy baloons and costumes when they are happy, oh, and of course, the way to see a visitors eye view on things so you can make sure there are no bottlenecks or pieces of path missing. There is multiplayer, as such, through a world network of parks where you get to publish your park in a city of your choice. At first the game was hard to get to grips with, but I got some enjoyment once I mastered the whole park building thing, and made a stedy profit.

82% - Fairly good, but flawed in the few essential areas needed for a game of this type.