Ski Resort Tycoon

"You gotta love a game in which business moguls make moguls for Picaboo Street"

I really am not sure what the publicists were thinking when they didn't come up with a good slogan for this game. Imagine the great publicity they could have gotten by tagging Ski Resort Tycoon with ‘Moguls making moguls!’ Activision really dropped the ball here. Are skiing tycoons any more fun to be than railroad tycoons, shopping mall tycoons, or amusement park tycoons? Well, no. But Ski Resort Tycoon still provides an entertaining romp though the ins and outs of making your own entirely self-sufficient resort complex.

One of the gameplay quirks in Ski Resort Tycoon is how your advisors want you to build everything your visitors could ever need on site. Then they complain how many of these aforementioned buildings lose money. Luckily your admissions easily cover your losses, and once you hit a rather constant level of about 500 visitors a day your businesses will come right along with it. However, until you hit that point, getting into the hotel business is surely the most lucrative. Luckily you start out, in the normal game, with a 50,000 stipend, which allows you to get a nice base off the start, with some basic buildings, cabins, and a few runs. Eventually your cash flow will be so consistent you just have to wait for the money to come. You know it is on its way, but you just have to be patient.

If patience is not a virtue you possess, I cannot say I would recommend you playing Ski Resort Tycoon. A lot of time is spent checking up on your business profits, making sure your maintenance workers and ski patrols are getting their jobs done, and otherwise stalling until you have enough money to build whatever it is that you want made. The game procrastinates more than me with a major project that is not due for another two months. And there is no method of taking out a quick loan so you do not have to sit around doing nothing. I tend to be working on a review at the same time as playing Ski Resort Tycoon, or watching a baseball game of some sort. It’s one of those games that you can multitask while playing and really not lose anything.

One of the oddest quirks in Ski Resort Tycoon is how runs and lifts really have no impact on your star rating. Unlike in games like Sim Tower, in which these star ratings actually have some bearing on the gameplay, the stars in Ski Resort Tycoon are meaningless figureheads. New items and buildings are unlocked through the building of other buildings. And when you build more and more buildings to appease your advisors and guests. Even if you only have one beginner, intermediate, advanced, and expert run available, and one of each lift, you can easily obtain that perfect five star rating, so long as you build everything else, from portable toilets to a center for the preservation of Big Foot.

With all of these great buildings for you to build, it would be wonderful if you got some great designs to go along with it. Sadly most of these buildings are eerily similar to one another, and you can only tell which is which by hours of practice, or by highlighting each individual building just to keep track of what you have built where. Or else you could navigate the long, constantly growing list of buildings you have added to your complex, either of the other mentions is easier.

If you think the buildings look similar without nature’s winter coverings, you should see them when the snow starts falling. Everything gets absolutely blanketed with snow. Watching the snowfall is serene. Activision did a wonderful job presenting the flakes plummeting from the sky in varying degrees of severity, easily showing the world of difference between light flurries and an absolute blizzard, a blizzard which tends to cause a building-damaging, people-injuring, absolutely devastating avalanche.

Avalanches are very massive. People are very small. This does not provide a very safe combination, and as you watch the piles of snow overturn mounds of white and established pine trees crumbling, you can easily detect the gravity of the situation as the tiny, multi-colored bodies are tossed about by the waves of snow, like individual leaves in a tornado. Watching these dangerous disasters in action can become monotonous if it is nowhere significant in your resort, but if one is flying towards a crowded run, or worse yet, the heart of your resort, you’ll watch on with horror, just hoping it will miss that poor skier, completely unaware of his impending doom.

There are some graphical quirks. When laying paths among hills in the snow, some of them can end up a bit wacky, as hills are not evenly broken up like the flatlands are. Lag can also be a problem, unless you have a very powerful system. Despite the low system requirements, Ski Resort Tycoon eats up a lot of resources. So there tend to be random delays and choppy animation, especially when going to and from menus, which can be a real pain in an already slow-moving game.

Regardless of the graphical problems, the quality of them dwarves that of the music. This music sounds nothing like you would hear at a ski resort. Instead players are burdened with the pleasure of peppy MIDI files. Oh joy. They really motivate me to build the perfect pancake house! I have never had the desire to mute a game and load up Windows Media Player quite that strong, and I pray I never will again. Just play your own music. Don’t even bother with what was intended to be heard.

The sound effects are a million times better than the music, but there are still some problems, the biggest of which is the complete lack of variety. The same menus noise is always played, and there are only a couple of in game noises, for building construction, sudden profits, and avalanche. The rest of the time you are only blessed with the sounds of the MIDI files. Shoot me now.

I mentioned a little earlier in the review some problems with the lag, causing some graphical jumpiness. Well, this jumpiness also translates to some problems with the control, at times making it difficult to precisely place your buildings and runs. I have also had some problem extending ski jumps and halfpipes, the game accidentally building them before I had them as long as I had intended. It was also difficult at times to highlight individual buildings in your ‘downtown’ area, and even harder to pick out individual people to read their thoughts. Since right clicking is the easiest way to get information about anything in Ski Resort Tycoon, you will probably find yourself facing that problem an awful lot.

Despite these flaws, Ski Resort Tycoon manages to be entertaining. Building your resort up to the top is a time-consuming, but rewarding venture. A few things could have made this a more enjoyable resort building process. For instance, you could have some competition. Instead of merely having your guests leave, you should have two or three other resorts for you to compete directly with. It would have helped make strategy a much more important element in this title. Also, if you could experience your resort, Ski Resort Tycoon would have hours of gameplay added. Say you could leisurely ski down the bunny hill. Maybe you could race other expert skiers in a slalom race. Or perhaps you could take on snowboarding masters on the halfpipe. Being able to experience what you have created would have added a dimension to the game, and would have improved the game infinitely.

Ski Resort Tycoon is not so much a challenging game as a time-consuming one. Even the challenge missions are a cinch to complete, because they allotted to many turns for the completion. The biggest difficulty is that money takes an awful long time to build up in your funds, so it really becomes a waiting game when you want to by big buildings like the Big Foot Preservation Center. That being said, getting visitors into your park really isn’t hard at all. Having five or six runs, some basic resort necessities, and plenty of lodging will be plenty for you to succeed.

Ski Resort Tycoon does not really lure you in to play for years on end. It’s a game that you really have to be in the mood to play, and that mood does not come about often after the initial joy of having a new game wears off. It’s a good time consumer when you were wishing you were out on the slopes, but it tends to wear off rather quickly.

It’s only fitting to be reviewing Ski Resort Tycoon among the lodges and chateaus of Vail and Aspen, home of some of the grandest and greatest ski resorts in all the world. (Laptops on road trips are a wonder.) I can look out my car window now and see the distinctive patterns that the trees make, set against the lonely grass paths down the hillside. If only I was in Colorado in January instead of July. Skiing is an experience like no other, and I do wish that Ski Resort Tycoon could have done a better job relaying just how distinctive an experience that tearing down a black diamond really is.

PROS
*Wide variety of buildings for you to make.
*Bonus challenge missions for you to do.
*Gameplay promotes multi-tasking.

CONS
*You cannot experience what you build.
*Among the worst music in any video game ever.
*Limited challenge and replay value.

SCORE SUMMARY

GAMEPLAY--6
GRAPHICS--7
MUSIC--1
SOUND--4
CONTROL--4
FUN--5
CHALLENGE--LOW TO MEDIUM
REPLAY VALUE--LOW TO MEDIUM

OVERALL--5

Reviewer's Score: 5/10, Originally Posted: 07/17/02, Updated 07/17/02