Man. You know what I love? It just amazes me to see that they have a game package including every expansion for a game, as well as the game itself, for the same price as any one expansion pack. Think about that for a moment.
Heh. .. Gotta love it.
... Especially when it's all only $20.
This is really amazing. It all fits onto one CD. Contained within, there are so many themes and items, ... I doubt I've ever seen so many in my life. I mean, they even top the items and themes in Morrowind! (And those who've played it know what I mean.
The game(s) also come(s) with a scenario editor. It's fairly simple and intuitive. You work it one step at a time. First, you set up the themes, and what's available to you in the scenario. Then you edit all of the terrain to suit your liking, placing down any and all theme objects (MINUS the actual rides and attractions. Only things like theme items, signs, benches, garbage cans, lamps, tunnels, walkways, etc can be placed here.) .. Oh, as well as your Entrance, and where the guests spawn from. The next screen is the invention screen. Basically you drag items into two groups - One which has already been researched, and the next is what has to be researched next. I suppose it goes on the order of the list.The next stop is to set the park stats, such as money, guest happiness, thirst, and hunger, and the next step is to set the scenario briefing and objectives. The next step is to just save it. :p It's pretty nice, as a whole. You can only give yourself $10,000 maximum, but you can set the maximum loan as high as you'd like. I set it for $1,500,000 recently. Apparently it can go that high. The annual interest rate can go no lower than 5% though. .. Meh. No problem. The "standard" appears to be 9%.
The engine, however, is exactly the same as the first game. I mean, EXACTLY THE SAME! With the exception of the placement of the top central row of buttons, the misplacement of a few things, and the addition of a "Remove Scenery" button, and the nifty ability to move object height via the shift key and the up/down movement of the mouse, .. there really isn't all that much new.
The scenario design is much better than in the last game though. You'll see some REALLY cool stuff here. The pre-designed scenarios look so cool! The first one, Sherwood Park, where you're building a theme park in the center of a forest with Robin hood and such, (And obviously, themed appropriately for the situation.) is already built for you, you just have to get $1000 a month (ANY month, actually. Just one will do, thankfully.) in ride ticket revenue. Not difficult at all. Just build one more rollercoaster, and set it for $5. The scenario is really beautiful. There are flowers and trees everywhere, and spiked wooden post-fences all around. It's really a sight to see.
I suppose if you've never tried the first game, you'll jump out of your socks at all the great things you can do here. If you have, though, you'll find a few abilities to be interesting, such as the ability to place those TV's in quoe lines, and placing a roof of some sort onto a quoe line. (Though you can do that anywhere. I really like the new details you can do. That placing of objects at any height, is a real gift to people. Really. There's very little you can't do now that you couldn't do before, or at least that you wanted to.
Of course, making Rollercoasters is still hard, even with the track designer. It's a very nice piece of work, but you still have a lot of trouble connecting track pieces, or making tight squeezes. It's still very difficult, but at LEAST we don't have to spend our hard earned money designing a rollercoaster mid-scenario. That's really very nice.
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