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Rollercoaster Tycoon 3 Soaked! expansion pack | |
| Developer: Frontier Publisher: Atari Release Date: Out Now Players: |
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“Your love is like a rollercoaster baby baby, I wanna ride.” Wise words indeed from naked-except–for-socks funksters Red Hot Chili Peppers on the B side to Engelbert Humperdinck’s Top 500 hit: Lesbian Seagull. So true. Words that developers Frontier no doubt took as their mantra when they created Rollercoaster Tycoon 3 several months ago. Frontiers publishers, Atari, rolled out RT3 to acclaim, but there were a few minor niggles to do with inexplicable ride mechanics and Peep (the visitors to your theme park) behaviour. The wet and wild expansion pack, Soaked! is now here, and it certainly gets my juices flowing, with improvements and additions that enhance the experience. Wet!
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So what gameplay elements has Soaked! served up on a bed of lettuce? Well, the major additions, as implied by the title, are pool complexes and water slides. These bring a wealth of new elements into the fray for your Peeps to enjoy. Pool formation is free-form click and drag, so you can create the shape you want and customize it with additions such as underwater lights, ladders, diving boards, hot tubs, sun loungers and even lifeguards. The pools themselves can also be surrounded by a patio area and linked using special paths. Also new is a wealth of fun waterslides that you can either create from scratch using a similar method to ‘coaster building or choose from the pre-fabricated designs. Pool complex building can be quite tricky, especially on unlevelled terrain. You can find yourself creating lots of very small pools at different heights if you are not careful. Best to clear an area for your pool complex first. You can also add custom walls to the complexes and theme them as you would any other ride. )
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The Peeps enter the pool complex via a “changing room” and pay a one-off charge to use the complex, so you can justify a high price if you have added a load of waterslides, as these are all free once the Peeps have entered the complex. Of course, they will have to pay this charge again if they leave. To claw back more cash from your punters, Frontier have added a number of stalls that you can place on the route to the pools. Now Peeps can get fleeced for things like inflatables and swimming costumes as well as the usual sunscreen, food and drinks. )
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Soaked! fixes many of the issues that were shipped alongside the original RCT3, but I still found that my reasonably-specced test machine had issues with framerate stutter, slowdown and cursor lag on the settings that the game initially defaulted to. I had to turn of some of the whizz-bang effects for things to work super smoothly. Saying that, the water looks luscious and sparkles in the sun, ripples are gorgeous and the sound of Peeps enjoying themselves is spot-on. It’s a bit of a shame you can’t customize the colour of the patio tiles or add things like stalls or foliage inside the complexes, but that’s a minor niggle and I was quite happy planting a line of trees around the outside. )
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Frontier and Atari have come up trumps with this lovely add-on to RCT3. It brings a nice load of new scenarios, as well as enough new material to make it worth your while and go back to the original RCT3 scenarios and replay them. Of course, sandbox mode, the no-limit freeform mode, is further enhanced by the package. I think the Chilis would be happy to dive into the pools of love in this expansion pack, as well as riding the rollercoasters into the sunset.
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- Big, brash pool complexes. - Waterslides. - Replay value. |
- You'll get some slowdown on non-top end machines. - Loading times can be hefty. - Supplied music is crap, thank goodness for custom soundtracks. |
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