Sim Theme Park Review


For PlayStation

Rating: Good
   Sim Theme Park is a very addictive game that isn't quite as deep as 
Bullfrog's previous simulation games.  It's incredibly fun for a while, but 
the shine eventually wears off and a relatively shallow game is found 
underneath.
   There are two areas of discussion when it comes to Sim Theme Park: What 
makes it such a very good game, and what prevents it from being an awesome 
game.  The things that make it a very good game are the same things that 
make most of Bullfrog's games so good.  It's a very addictive formula to 
build a business from scratch, expand it to reach new heights, maintain all 
the aspects of the business so that it doesn't fall apart, and then start 
the process all over again.  The same basic simulation elements that are 
found in Theme Hospital are also found in Sim Theme Park; the only major 
difference is that you're building a theme park instead of a hospital.  If 
you want more details on what makes this gameplay formula work so well, you
can read my Theme Hospital Review.
   The problem with Sim Theme Park is that rather than simply adapting 
Theme Hospital's classic gameplay formula to a theme park (which would have 
been just fine), they changed it way too much, possibly in an attempt to 
make the game more "mass-market."  While Theme Hospital is an extremely 
deep game that would thoroughly entertain me if I pulled it out today, I've 
already reached a point in Sim Theme Park where I feel like I've done 
everything there is to do.
   Theme Hospital's patients are fairly large and detailed, letting you see 
each of their facial expressions and mood changes.  On the other hand, Sim 
Theme Park's visitors are tiny dots with no detail whatsoever.  Besides 
being ugly, this eliminates most of the game's personality right off the 
bat.  Where's the sense of satisfaction in seeing a particular visitor 
enjoy your park and leave with a smile on their face?  The visitors in Sim 
Theme Park show about as much personality as a dried-up orange peel.
   There are only a few different "tiny dot models," and they're often 
bunched together in clusters.  This usually makes it impossible to track 
the progress of one particular visitor.  Visitors also have a tendency to 
wander around randomly, often walking back and forth in a particular area 
of the park for long periods of time.  This is a stark contrast to the 
clear and logical journey of each individual patient in Theme Hospital.
   I could have lived with the lackluster graphics if they were this game's 
only problems.  After all, Civilization 2 is one of the deepest games of 
all time, but it looks like an NES game.  The biggest problem with Sim 
Theme Park is that it's simply not as deep or strategic as any of 
Bullfrog's previous simulations.  All you really have to do is research 
everything like there's no tomorrow and build everything you possibly can, 
and you'll eventually meet the level objectives and move on to the next 
park.
   The level of micro-management in the game is quite small, which is a 
good thing for action games and a bad thing for simulations.  What little 
micro-management the game has is often rendered useless by quirks in the 
Artificial Intelligence.  For example, lowering the prices at your stores 
doesn't significantly increase business.  It is extremely rare for anyone 
to ever buy something from a Burger Shop or Fries Shop, regardless of 
whether you're charging an unreasonably high price or 1/60th of the default 
price.  Sim Theme Park's micro-management requires a lot of effort to get a 
very small reward.
   There are plenty of other flaws in the AI that had to have been noticed 
by the testers at EA and Bullfrog.  Sometimes you have to build a 
particular ride a few tiles away from everything else in the park due to 
the large size of some rides.  Often times when you have to do this, 
visitors will never, ever get on the ride, even if it has the highest 
possible excitement rating.  Also, mechanics regularly ignore orders to 
upgrade or fix rides, and they spend most of their time wandering around 
aimlessly rather than doing their jobs.  The incompetent mechanics would
have been more than enough to make upgrading your rides a painful task, but 
the game also resets all of your custom settings for each ride after every 
upgrade.
   Sim Theme Park is unrealistic in the things that it demands from you, or 
more accurately, the things that it doesn't demand from you.  Basic things 
like hiring security guards and building bathrooms are completely un-
necessary in the game, with no clear consequences for skipping out on them.  
In reality, a theme park with no bathrooms would be shut down by the Board 
of Health very quickly, and a park with no security guards would be ruled 
by anarchy within hours. 
   The pace of the game is painfully slow, and there are no settings to 
change the speed.  Simulation games should let you play at a blindingly 
fast speed, a slow-motion speed, or anywhere in between.  Sim Theme Park 
forces you to play in slow-motion and doesn't give you any choice in the 
matter. 
   There are occasional awards given out in Sim Theme Park, but there are 
no annual awards that compare you to computer-controlled establishments.  
These annual awards added a nice sense of perspective to Theme Hospital, 
but they're strangely missing from Sim Theme Park.  Also, the bizarre 
cinemas still refer to the game as Theme Park World, which is what it was 
called before EA decided to do some deceptive cross-branding with the "Sim" 
brand for the game's US release.
   The inherent problem with this kind of game on a console is that it was 
originally designed from the bottom up to run on the PC's mouse and 
keyboard set-up.  The PlayStation version's interface is decent and it 
could have been a lot worse, but it still can't compare to the PC 
version's.  The interface makes many tasks in the game harder than they 
should be.  Most annoying of all is the fact that the in-game cursor is 
actually invisible, and objects have a light green glow to them when 
they're "highlighted."  Why not just put a freakin' cursor in the game so 
that you don't have to use trial and error to highlight an object?
   Rather than being an improvement over its predecessor, this game is 
actually much worse than Theme Hospital in the important areas of depth, 
strategy, micro-management, and individuality.  Sim Theme Park makes for a 
great weekend rental, and that could easily turn into a week-long rental if 
you get addicted.  But ultimately, if you want a simulation game from 
Bullfrog, this isn't the one to get.

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