RollerCoaster Tycoon: Corkscrew Follies Expansion

"Great expansion."

Roller Coaster Tycoon is essentially a game that lets you create and manage your own virtual theme park. You can build rides, scenery, hire staff, and just about anything else you can associate with building a theme park. The game was fun and all but there were some elements missing from the game. Variety was one of those things. This expansion pack… well... expanded upon the original game to introduce all new scenarios, parks, rides, scenery and much more.

The game just added more variety to the games attractions. There are more shops and stalls, roller coasters, kiddie rides, thrill rides, water rides, and any other type of ride in the game. They have all been expanded or improved.

The best part about the ride expansions is probably what they did with the roller coasters. They added in many new types of roller coasters, such as the stand-up roller coaster, and all new track features. Now you can create even more insane roller coasters for your guests to enjoy and afterward puke on your well-maintained paths.

The gameplay is just as fun as in the first game. When I first got the game I played it for a huge amount of time. It really sucked me in for a few weeks. I spent hours and hours creating wacky coasters and building up my parks to reach that goal of that last park. But… alas, ‘twas not to be since I had to re-install the game later on before I got there I just said “screw it.” Then of course I fell to the temptation of cheats to get that last park.

In case you were wondering, you can play all of the parks from the first game in this expansion as well. That is with all of the improvements made in Corkscrew Follies. That is a small plus.

How challenging is this game? Well that depends upon what you are talking about. How hard is it to build a roller coaster? Well, that depends upon the type of roller coaster you want to build and where. A regular steel roller coaster will usually go easily enough and profit finely as long as it doesn’t have too many twists and turns and loops in it. A vertical drop roller coaster, on the other hand, is difficult to work with since it will usually get very high intensity and nausea ratings no matter what you do. That type takes a lot of experience and some skill to construct.

The scenarios really aren’t that hard to pass once you figure out how to build and manage a good park. To get past all of them all you need is patience and to have the game appeal to you over that long time it will take you to get there. There are some scenarios that do require a lot of skill to pass since they will give you a very limited amount of room and money to build on. But eventually you will get the hang of those scenarios and pass them.

The graphics are pretty much the same as the original game and since you can’t buy play this game without playing the first game I feel that this would just be redundant because there have been absolutely no graphics improvements whatsoever in this expansion. Unless you call more scenery variety better graphics… I don’t.

The sound is rather monotonous and irritating as usual so the best option is to just turn off the sound in the game and play some of your favorite music. Unless of course you want to hear toilets flushing, people puking, little kids screaming and so on. I certainly don’t feel like putting myself through that.

For all of you sadists out there I will tell you the following. You can drown guests by picking them up and dropping the, in some kind of water; you can charge them $50 to go to the bathroom; and even build roller coasters that are destined to crash and kill everybody on board. Sick and twisted but it is irresistibly fun to do.

But of course this is still essentially a click-click-click game. This does get boring after a while and perhaps the only lasting appeal of this game is to try and complete the scenarios to unlock the big park of the game where you have everything unlocked and all the land you could possibly want to build on.

Pros

- new rides
- new scenery
- more scenarios and parks

Cons

- still has the irritating sound/music
- no graphics improvements

All in all, if you enjoyed the first of this series then go out to buy this one. It is relatively cheap so it won’t require a huge amount of money on your part. It’s fun, challenging, and has some lasting appeal.

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 04/10/04