Theme Park Roller Coaster

"Kill the Ant thing!!"

It looked so cute, so innocent, then it got ugly.

Story: You start off as, well, someone, who somehow wants to get his hand on a roller coaster theme park. You have to edit pretty much everything, 'helped' by an annoying tutorial 'ant'. You have to collect golden tickets to open up new parks, many of which are really no different of the original.

Sound: No bad at all really. Just what you would expect of a theme park. Children screaming, children screaming, and children screaming. As I said, not too bad. But then comes along the Big Bad Ant guy! You are 'helped out' the entire game by some kind of black ant. He has the stupidest voice, something that if you heard over and over again, you'd be dead within hours. Even if you turn the tutorial off he'll continue to bug you. No matter how well you follow his instructions, he'll somehow find out how to nag you about something else. For example:
"Don't you think your rides are getting a little stale? How about you hire a researcher to research some more?" Once you've done that:
"Your staff wages are hirer than your income, how about you let some of them go?" Errggh!

Graphics: They're cute and smooth cut from a distance, but if you use the cam corder option, to kind of get a look at what your visitors see, everything is clunky and ugly. Plus, in camcorder mode, you can only walk straight or turn, not both at once. It drives you mad, trying to control it. But for the main part, they're very good.

Gameplay: Well, you get to edit everything from how many trash cans you want in your park, to the amount of salt in your french fries. It is fun at first, when you're getting everything ready for the opening. But when the people start flooding in, and the ant starts its endless monologue with the occasional failed joke, all you can do is wait. You can of course go into cam corder mode, but it's impossible to control. You can try to ride your rides, but you can't see anything but a blur of pixels. All you can do is wait for new rides and upgrades, which take an incredible amount of time. Plus when you've got all the golden tickets you can get in a park, you can open a new park! Pick any out of a full 9! Actually there's really only three, the other six are all just repeats of the first three parks.

If you want to, go ahead and rent this, but do not buy it. It will not last more than a week. Plus, there's the added risk of you smashing your tv screen with a machete to stop the Ant menace.

Reviewer's Score: 5/10, Originally Posted: 06/18/07