RollerCoaster Tycoon

The Good
Must play game. Must play Game. Must play game. Must play Game. Must play Game...... Wow. Sorry about that I can only talk for a few minutes I have to get back to my game.

All kidding aside Rollercoaster Tycoon can be VERY addictive. This game really was genius. It has just the right ballance of all the important things. (1) Good Learing Curve. (2) Good Graphics. (3) ORGINAL thought. ie.. they didnt just copy the game from someone else. (4) game draws you in and doesnt let go. (5) Replayability (I can pick it up after not playing it for a month or two) (6) Depth of programing. a good example would be how much thought and feeling went into each stall and sound of the game. (7) It all comes together and is still fun to play. All too often a great idea and lots of hours of work are for not, because it didn't all come together into something that is fun to play.
This is the only game that my wife is addicted to. If you can make a game that she even likes then you have accomplished something. So this is a must for Women who are looking for a PC game to play but dont want to see naked women or blow up everything. (although my wife does like to throw guests into water when they get lost... someday that will be me)

The Bad
Well even this game does have parts that can be bad. The land controler is horrible. They need to take a note from Sim City 3000. Second where are my arcades and skeet ball games? You cant have a park without Skeetball! :-)

The Bottom Line
Overall this is a game the entire family can enjoy from sun up to sun down. They should give out a copy to everyone who buys a new PC.

The Good
There's a lot about RCT to like, but the major points include:

1. As business simulations go, RCT is arguably the best of the bunch. It's well-balanced, deep and complex without being overly complicated, and gives the player a lot of freedom.

2. The roller coaster construction functions are surprisingly cool. I've been able to replicate just about any coaster I've ever personally been on. The building and terraforming controls are very nicely done.

3. The game is a visual and auditory feast; frankly, it just looks awesome. It's colourful, has great little animations, and has great-looking rides.

4. It's a very accessible game and a load of fun for either the obsessive gamer or the casual computer user. RCT is one of the few games I'd be confident anyone would enjoy.

RCT is probably the third-best pure business simulation ever made for the PC; I'd rank Railroad Tycoon and SimCity ahead of it, but not by much.

The Bad
1. As has been complained about by many others, RCT's scenarios are nice but the game really does need an open-ended sandbox mode or some random land areas or something. Furthermore, UNLOCK THE DAMNED SCENARIOS! (You have to win some to unlock others.) I paid my money for this game; why should I have to win a scenario I find uninteresting to play another?

1. The game's manual is atrocious.

2. It could use midway games. I've never seen a theme park that didn't have midway games, so their absence is a strange oversight.
   
   The Bottom Line
   A classic and fun game that anyone will enjoy.

The Good
I normally hate this kind of game. I never liked any of the Sim games. This one grabbed me though. I think the management aspect of the game was easy enough to handle but still challenging enough to make it fun. The graphics and sound are nice and it ran well on my PII/233, even when I had an enourmous park with a million things going on at once. The rides were interesting and there were enough roller coaster designs to keep the game from getting stale. It's also kind of fun to make a deathtrap roller coaster that kills a few people every now and then. Though the physics of the game aren't perfect, it still takes things like gravity and speed into consideration. I also like the fact that you need to put a lot of bathrooms and garbage cans at the exits to the rollercoasters so people can throw up in them. Otherwise you get this gross little splotches on the pavement that never seem to get cleaned up.

The Bad
The perspective is a little skewed and at times it's hard to manipulate land when you accidentally lower it too far. Customers get lost much too easily and frankly, they're annoying when they whine about how they can't find the park exit. I like to think that in real life, someone just might figure out that the park exit is not going to magically appear in the 20 square foot area they refuse to leave. And in real life, maintenance men are not that lazy. They're probably teamsters but I am constantly having to make them clean the place up and it really distracts from the parts of the game that are fun. And the park guests are the biggest weenies I've ever seen. Sure the coasters look scary and I would never ride them in a million years, but don't you think that when you let someone design a rollercoaster that will never materialize in the real world, they're going to make it as scary as possible? Half of my coasters are never ridden because the guests are too chicken to get on.

The Bottom Line
I guess it would be best compared to a Sim game but I hate those and love this so draw your own conclusions. It's really like nothing else out there.