Jay Swartzfeger (evgenius@fyi.net) wrote:

: Things I loved: This game has tons of options. If you love sims where
: you'll be glued to the set, Theme Park will do it. Hilarious sound effects.
: Cool rendered FMV's.

: Things I hated: This game may have too many options! You can easily get
: lost in all of the details. The screen text is WAY TOO HARD TO READ. I went
: blind trying to read some screens.

The first twenty minutes of play I was continually swearing (I'm a baby - 
shoot me), but after I restarted and began paying more attention to 
things, I became utterly engrossed and forgiving of the poor text 
contrast and font.

The screen text had POOR, no, godawful contrast with the background 
colors;  the text's font was non-standard and certainly added to the 
contrast problem.  I think Bullfrog should be flat out ashamed -- such a 
glorious game could have been so much better if the text didn't have to be 
stared at for ages just to figure out what it means.  However, I'm used 
to the text, for the most part, and can now discern it almost as well as 
more standard text.

The game enjoyment arises from having creative license over what must be 
thousands of details AND approaching a working knowledge of how these 
details interact with one another..  At first this ocean of details takes 
your breath away, leaving you dizzy and confused, but soon it all seems to 
have a proper place, as you get a better handle on things.

Here's a detail which I find particularly nifty:  you can set up a 
maintenance person to patrol exclusively between a french fry stand and a 
soft drink stand (which you can place anywhere) so that when people drop 
litter or throw up, he or she can pick it up right away - if the 
maintenance person isn't doing his or her part (which can be discovered 
by accessing a ranking of employee productivity), thereby turning off   
customers who find an unclean park unfun, then you can fire that person 
or even give them incentive to work harder -- a raise.  If you fail to 
assign someone to pick up the trash, people will eventually stop hanging 
around the affected area.  Neat!
   
This game gives one that hazy feeling, since there's so much to keep in 
mind at any one time.  It's fun -- I have to restrain myself from 
getting wacked out and hyper from all of the simultaneous happenings. 
This game has quite a learning curve (if you don't like games 
which require a lot of reading to get started (like 52 pages, to be precise), 
then this is something you'd better rent first.

Sounds effects are excellent!  They seem to be related to where the 
cursor is:  if the cursor is near an installment of toilets you'll 
probably hear flushing before seeing a patron exit.

Another comment:  the 'X' button, unlike with almost every other PS game 
menu command button setup, giveth, not taketh away;  the same reversal goes 
for the 'O' button, which is now the take away button.  That was a bummer 
for me -- I like the way the bottom button usually undoes an action, and 
now I'm having to unlearn this. 

: ps-- Unlike most PS games, Theme Park comes with a very good manual.

For sure.

One other thing:  this game has a full save option - you can save your 
Park configuation down to every detail, unlike the Jaguar's Theme Park, 
which only allows one to save money earned.

Takehome message:  this game is WONDERFUL for those who enjoy juggling 
details and processes around in their heads, despite the horrible 
text font and background contrast.  Highly motivated megalomaniacs will 
fully realize their control needs with Theme Park.

----------
Rick Brown