Thrillville

Thrillville is a sim game not unlike your basic Roller Coaster Tycoons, or Sim Theme Parks that have set the bar. You fill the role of the Park Manager and busy yourself with countless missions in different parks much like you would expect. The difference is that this game experience is really streamlined for the general audience so you won’t find all that complexity of the other games. All in all however there really is a lot of game depth here for a stand-alone console game. Even though it may lack the clean play of a PC game, it has only minor drawbacks. They even go as far to throw in a party mode that gives this game that extra dynamic it just may need to wind up in your game collection.

So at first glance you might find yourself saying, “Yea been there, done that,” right? Well Thrillville may be something of a reiteration of the same old tired idea, it has some crowning attributes which really help it shine on its own. The game starts you out meeting your crazy, mad-scientist uncle Mortimer who happens to excel at theme park design. He is busy developing some new, insane invention of some kind and seems to be having trouble keeping up with his chain of parks. So of course your talents are called upon to bring sanity to the madness. The game starts off by creating your virtual likeliness, which isn’t all together diverse, there is a list of avatars that you get to pick from. Next you are off to your first challenge. There are a total of six parks that you will eventually explore including the tutorial-ized first level.

The parks have kind of a different set-up. Your control is quite limited in that you have no direct control over the look of the park. All the parks you play are pre-set with themes, some of which are really neat. So people looking to build the park of their dreams won’t find it here. The parks themselves are further divided into sub-sectioned themes. For example, the first park, Thrillville, has three themed sections to it entitled, Ogreville, Futureville, and Superville. Taking into account that most of the decorations are really pretty cool, the lack of customizability can wear on you. You are however able to get rid of a given decoration by simply building through it. One main facet of any game that falls into this crowed is its coaster builder. This game has a fairly good system for you to work with, but it does limit a lot of your placement. More times then not you will find yourself going out of bounds or too near another attraction. That can get pretty old pretty quick. The first noticeable thing is there is no lift track. Instead all you have to do is create an upward piece of track and the lift mechanic is automatically implied. This proves true on straight track as well so you literally never have to worry about your coasters getting stuck at any point. Also you can’t crash your coasters, because you have very limited control over building, the game won’t let you build anything dangerous or unfinished. It also is a shame for the shuttle loop fans like myself. You just have to keep in mind that the game is mainstreamed for casual gamers.

The next major facet of game play is the mini games. Aside from the fact that there is a whole separate mode just for four buddies to sit and play some party games, you can play them in the single player campaign for cash! Each of these mini games should prove to be somewhat familiar to the average gamer. The game works on a mission system. Each park has a certain number of missions that you have to pass before you can move onto the next park. These missions are grouped into different categories that define what the mission is. There are missions for building such as making a coaster that has a certain drop and number of G’s, playing through a mini game to beat a kid’s high score, training staff members, racing people in go karts of mini gold, and more. This mission system is pretty well rounded and you won’t tire of it too quickly. Once you reach a certain number of missions completed, you unlock the next park and are off to another cut scene and another challenge. I suppose it is worth mentioning that there is a loose story line to this but its really not that original.

The game really gets frustrating when you try to use the camera. Camera control in the general view as you walk around the park can get glitchy or stuck behind a wall. Sometimes this happens while building a coaster too. The graphics in general can be a bit twitchy when you’re just walking around. Some may argue that the overall difficulty of the game is easy but it isn’t designed for the heavy gamer so in that regard it is probably just right for the pick up and play person. Also, aside from some nice additions to the soundtrack in the background, the game’s music can get a tad old. Some of the mini games feel tacky or unimaginative, really leaving you feeling as if it was a last minute toss together. For example the localized FPS engine for the game is very hard on the controls and there is no way that a casual gamer is going to breeze through some of the later missions pertaining to that mini game. All these things aside the game really isn’t half bad, it has a lot to it and you have the multiplayer mini games too so its not a bad addition to your collection. Just make sure you understand that it’s targeted towards the pick up and play kind of gamer, not the serious one. I gave this game a 7 out of 10, which is “Excellent” on my scale.