Roller Coaster Tycoon: The PC Game: The Board Game

REVIEW ONE: ROLLER COASTER TYCOON

PURCHASED: GOODWILL ALBUQUERQUE

PRICE: $2.99 + TAX

PLAYERS: 2-4

AGES: 8 & UP

CREATED BY: PARKER BROTHERS

  The first review I'm posting is about a game that should realistically require no introduction, aside from the fact that this is, in fact, a BOARD GAME, and not actually the PC version of the game. Yes, that's right, they created a board game variation of the classic theme-park creation PC game from the mid 90s. Will it live up to expectactions? Will it be as time-wastingly entertaining as the PC game notoriously was? Will clowns and stuffed-suit entertainers be dancing around with pure glee? All the mysteries are hidden within this box.....

  For all intents and purposes, the box does a fairly good job of recreating the aspects of the PC game that made it so fun. Nice, bright colors (but not glaringly Mardi-Gras-esque bright) are present on the box and potential players are treated to a scene taken straight out of the PC game. The corkscrew is taken almost directly from the PC box itself, but hey, when you have a "hot ticket" intellectual property, you're going to have to pimp it out as much as possible, right? That it certainly does, though if the $2.99 were for actual pimping I'd be a little concerned about the product. Thankfully, this is a board game, and not a lady of questionable moral integrity.

  One of the first things I noticed on the box was this advertisement for a 'GIANT 20" x 30" GAMEBOARD!" -- which had me a bit concerned. Will my flimsy non-Brobdingnagian arms be able to reach across to move pieces? Will the actual game pieces seem particularly Lilliputian in nature vs. the sheer amount of space? When is the line drawn for Gulliver's Travels references? What were the name of those horse-lord people in the original book? Now I'm going to have to read it again.

  To be serious, my actual inital concern (my second concern being that my wife didn't get the Gulliver jokes) was that if you're advertising the game board over the game play, we're already starting down an empty, dead road with lots of space and not much going on. Will there be a lot of spaces to move to, or just a lot of big emptiness? Only going through the box and examining the contents will let our intrepid explorer know!

The first pieces to be assembled in the box were the large rides -- the roller coasters which the PC game allowed you to put to such creative use. These were the big moneymakers in the game, and it seems they will likely be in this installment as well. However, when attempting to assemble the coasters, I learned that the coasters are exactly like those in the original incarnations of the PC game: NIGH IMPOSSIBLE TO PUT TOGETHER. Just like how infuriating the camera angles could be in designing the coaster on the PC, the coasters are completely frustrating to put together. The cardboard coasters, although colorful and fun, had to slide into these small channels in the green plastic base, and were scored at certain places to be able to make the 'curves'. I'm not the world's greatest geometry whiz, but the cardboard makes straight lines, and the plastic grooves are actually curved. What ultimately results here is bent and broken carboard and some choice four-letter words. The stands are also somewhat Tower of Pisa-related in that it's impossible to get them to stay straight. All 'cool' factor in these was completely negated by how physics-bending they were to have to put together. Fortunately the non-coaster big ride was much easier to put together.....

  The downside, here, of course, is that apparently this theme park is somehow going to have a pre-Chester Arthur theme to it; what exactly is this ride? The Washington Monument Construction Zone Free-For-All? The surrounding circular fence literally looks like it would have "Under Construction" signs on it, and frankly I'm amazed that anyone could NOT make a Washington Monument connection here -- well, aside from those of you who are now making some sort of Bill Clinton joke. Yes, I did that too. No, I'm not going to explain that for those of you who don't get the joke.

The cards are the somewhat usual fare of family-oriented boardgames. They're colorful and bright, and the ride cards to be placed on the board here -- WAIT A SECOND. Take a closer look at those rides. Now look at the third picture. Our pimp is starting to look very familiar -- those aren't art pieces, those are screenshots from the actual PC game! This means either the designers really, really wanted us to remember at every waking moment that this is somehow connected to the PC game (which concerns me) or Parker Brothers decided to cheap out on the art department (which concerns me yet more). Either way, the pieces are certainly leaving not much to be desired here, unless you weren't familiar with the PC game, in which case why did you even buy this anyway?

I found the play money to be particularly funny. I'm sure there's some sort of obscure legal requirement that board game companies have to put NOT LEGAL TENDER on their slips of paper. I'd bet a high amount of legitimate money that someone attempted to take play money to their local Wal-Mart and attempted to sue when they stated they couldn't take it. I guess it could also be the flipside of the federal government's requirement for LEGAL TENDER on bills. Who knows? Either way, Parker Brothers is assuming that we are dribbling morons, and this is adding to the mounting fear about this board game.

Varying game pieces and tokens, all made relatively well. We have some sort of currency to be used and stacks of random rectangles, which are of the expected colors aside from purple. Deviating from the Family Board Game Standards and Practices Law of 1678, there is no standard green player indicator, yet we have yellow, blue, and red. Bizarre! This theme park also apparently employs McDonald's workers from the 1980s, or at least uses the same bulk rate work uniform supplier. Washington Monument with McDonald's employees. I'm not getting a theme out of that.

At least they were consistent with the McDonald's theme by providing a large stack of French fries.

The game board is finally revealed, and....it's not half bad! It's very colorful and definitely family-friendly. 20" x 30" is pretty big, but it's certainly not immense by any standard -- wait until my review of Milton Bradley's Floor Wars series (of one game) to see huge. The pathways lead one to think there's not much going on with gameplay, though, and that bodes even worse for the future of this review. The kid in me loves the frosted side of this board, but will the adult in me like the nutritious value of the gameplay?

For those of you who have played the PC game, these pictures are of particular interest. One of the more hilarious aspects of the game were restrooms -- a great money-making strategy in the game was to place a drink stall in front of a "pee your pants" style ride, then place a restroom near the exit. The clincher: the restrooms would cost $20 to use. Patrons would get thirsty, buy their drink, get on the ride, bring themselves close to soiling their own undergarments, then eagerly fork over any dough required to use the closest restroom. I am baffled that geniune theme parks do not utilize this strategy, as in the PC game, it made you a millionaire by default. The board game has placed the restrooms near these rides; is Parker Brothers hinting with a subtle wink that they're aware of every player's money printing scheme?

 The full setup does look pretty nice, and aside from separating pieces the first time, shouldn't be that hard to achieve. The big coasters and Washington Monument hang out on the side to be played and the tokens sit on the flip side -- when purchased, the token flips to 'open'. To begin the game, players decide who takes first turn and then decide whether to purchase a mechanic and handyman for varying sums. As we were only playing the 2-player game, each cost $400,000. If you don't have these individuals, it costs $200,000 to hire out -- something significant later on. The wife and I opted for the safety route, and McDonald's janitor and whisky-breathed carny were gainfully employed by both of us.

At the beginning of the game, the "guest" tokens congregate outside the gate. This makes the game feel less like a theme park and more like a zombie-free compound. The undead horde outside, craving cotton candy and clown brains, hammers away pitifully at the opening gate while the survivors huddle inside the log flume, wondering when rescue will occur....

At this point in the game I was already making up stories for alternate universes in the game world. Things are starting to look worse and worse for this game.

The turn mechanics are very simple. The first player flips over a card, trained monkey reads and follows, then 2 dice are rolled for the actual 'moving' portion of the turn. The color die indicates which guest moves, and the number is how many spaces said guest inches toward their burger, bathroom, Monument, or delicious clown brains. Rinse, repeat. The cards have varying things on them and gameplay revolves entirely around them.

I'm sure some of you are realizing this game mechanic is, well, not going to equate to a fun experience. You're absolutely correct in assuming that! Bravo! Pass Go, collect $200. There's absolutely no strategizing here. Flip a card and do what the card-god tells you to; add into that a random dice element and we're looking at sheer luck of the draw style gameplay here. Of course, remember the game is for ages 8 & up, so take that into consideration, but I'm thinking anyone above 10-11 or so is going to find this boring quickly.

Upon moving my first piece, the family seems to have lost limbs. Even the Merry-Go-Round in this park can be downright deadly. Perhaps there's something to this after all.

The various things the cards do involve shuffling guests around to restrooms, certain rides, information booths, you name it. This, in itself, isn't really problematic -- but the additional cards are. Placed within the deck are cards to move the month marker forward; this is how the game time is measured and when the marker reaches the end, the game is over. This adds to randomness as the shuffled deck could be nothing but 'move month marker' cards on top, thus leading to the quickest and likely most boring theme park ever created, as 4 rides does not anything above a county fair make.

The month markers are the cards that are required to be hit 100% in the course of a game. Here's the problem: The month marker cards denote when the $200,000 for contractor non-paid McDonald's janitors need to be employed. These come up at least five times. Therefore, in our sample 2-player game, one can pay $400,000 at the get-go or be guaranteed to have to pay at least $1,000,000 for not purchasing them. This is an inevitability in the game -- as these cards are necessary for game completion. Thus, after the first time you've played, you've already wised up to a "secret" to the game. Not a smart game mechanic at all.

Want an even less smart game mechanic? Auction-style mechanics are always bound to be a horrible experience. Certain cards start an auction for an attraction, and this is the only way you can purchase attractions for your theme-team. You flip over the ride card face-up or face-down according to your level of blindness (don't worry, the card will tell you) and then the players proceed to bid. Great, with only 2 players it's just going to go back-and-forth until someone bids more money than the other person has ad infinitum. Almost a guarantee of one-sided and boring gameplay. Even with 4 players, this is all that will end up happening, only on a grander scale and potentially taking longer. Simply not fun.

Onward the game plods, and I mean plods. Flip card. Roll dice. Move people. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. Several situations occurred in our gameplay that simply made things completely uninteresting: if one player runs completely out of money, they can't bid on the auction, which guarantees the player who turned the card will win without having to pay anything. Hardly ever does the 'get money' situation occur, even though people are riding these huge ridiculously expensive monstrosities. Then again, zombies probably don't have much cash, and clown brains don't have a great black market.

So you move your little people around and steal leprechaun-style coins from them that somehow equate to their happiness; the larger rides obviously mean more leprechaun-coins can be given to you. These rides of course cost more, supposedly, provided you have 4 players and the game mechanic doesn't screw you over in some significant way. I did manage to acquire the Washington Monument construction zone for my little part of the park, and here's the amazing view:

Woe betide you, for I am the lord of the Belly Whomper (or whatever it was they called that ride). Miniature base jumpers are flocking to my park.

So, the game relies entirely upon a card mechanic and a dice mechanic. No real thought or input is required on the part of the players, which may be a good thing for certain families, but I'm not from Arkansas and therefore my brain functions at a non-inbred level. Multiple situations can arise that simply become one-sided within the game, and the only actual 'strategy' is figuring out exactly how to move those little pieces the exact 6 spaces to your own rides.

This, of course, leads me to wonder something else: Why would two to four competing theme park moguls open a park together, then place their own rides in it in hopes of outwitting the other? Snidely Whiplash doesn't even have a business plan that idiotic. Wouldn't profits just therefore be split, implying that pooling resources and building the best park you can get would be the best option? If I really wanted to 'win', wouldn't I just open my own park further down the road, sans McDonald's employees?

  The sands of time thus flow onward, cards get flipped, pieces get moved, coins transfer hands, money doesn't really get gained, and the game finally completes. I did end up winning, but when you're completely broke and all you've got is these bizarre multi-colored coins, I don't really think you can consider your theme park "successful". Especially given that you've been using non-legal tender the entire time.

THE RATINGS:

PACKAGING/MARKETING - A solid Knight. Not absolutely horrible, but not particularly amazing in any stretch. While the game successfully reminds you of past enjoyment via your PC, it tries too hard to do this. Although the colors are vivid and bright, and I can see the family appropriateness, using actual in-game screenshots for your pieces just leads me to think you're cheap or trying too hard to capitalize on something else. So, you're cheap, or you're cheap. Nice.

BOARD QUALITY - This is pretty run-of-the-mill, but definitely worth a Bishop. The larger board is pretty cool, but it wasn't utilized in ways significant enough to keep me interested at all. Shiny things are great, but as stated above, I'm not inbred, so that's only going to work for so long. The 3D style attractions give a great angle to the game that is pretty fun, but since they're completely impossible to put together and are ultimately frustrating, whatever visual appeal they have gets negated. The pathways on the board are very simplistic and given the mechanics, seem completely unnecessary. The big board should be a feature of a good game, not a selling point for a bad one.

COMPLEXITY - I think the only complexity that came from this game was my zombie-clown eater strategies. I think if you climbed in the Monument and hid out you'd be okay. The gameplay is literally nothing other than turn card, roll dice, move pieces in Candyland style play, next turn. Auctions are more of an annoyance than a complex mechanism and if you can figure out a "secret" to the game in one play, you're looking at something that's quite simple.

 ENTERTAINMENT VALUE - The game wasn't fun for the situation I was in when I played it, and I can see it getting stale incredibly quickly no matter what situation, but even with 4 players, 3 of them being 8 year old children, the game's got hardly anything going for it. When you're thinking of separate situations to entertain yourself instead of playing the game, it's not a good sign. However, I can see some value in it with small children or family game night.

VARIABILITY - The cards and dice give the game a little bit of randomness, which means a game could be either very quick or very slow, but the problems inherent in the other categories mean a slow game has the potential to be excruciating. The mechanics don't vary and there's no real turn-by-turn difference in strategy; just roll the dice, flip the card, grab your ankles, and hope for the best.

POTPOURRI - The placement of bathrooms strategically and other items lead me to believe that the designers of the board game were at least in on some of the "in-jokes" of the game's source material, which gives me a nice little chuckle. A Bishop is awarded for that alone in the nonsensical Potpourri category.

AND THE OVERALL RATING IS:

KNIGHT.

The game's probably worth the $2.99 I paid for it, just for the experience of seeing a fun PC game attempted to turn into a board-style game. Did it fail miserably at capturing the essence of the PC game? Nope, but I'm not so sure that's a good thing, given the game succeeds to frustrate in ways the PC game did as well. The "pawn-saving" graces in the rating exist in its nice capturing of theme park colors and pretty reasonable packaging and marketing. I do like the board, I just wish there was more to do on it. You can see that there's the idea of a board game here, just not a board game in itself. Perhaps this game was pushed out the door quickly by Parker Brothers execs or something. I can see how it might be fun for a family game, although I didn't find it appealing, and given certain house rule adaptations it could amount to a Bishop-level game.

I wonder what rides the zombies would ride. Would they go into the haunted house? More frighteningly, would the haunted house be seen as the tunnel of love to a zombie?

Next week's review: 13 DEAD END DRIVE!