Some one may remember my post from last year about RCT2 http://www.joshx.com/rollercoaster-tycoon-2-love-it/878/ and how I mentioned RollerCoaster Tycoon 2, but hated the newer version 3.

Disclaimer: this isn’t a review really, its just me blabing and rambling about stuff.

I am finally inlove with RollerCoaster Tycoon 3! this game was released in like 2004 or 05, and I’m just now starting to love it. I put off playing it for so many years because I hated the way the camera controls worked. the views seemed clunky and just ugly! I preferred the classic way of RollerCoaster Tycoon, which lets you be above everything while you build, and manage it. Which is the best view for many games such as this. Some people love the entire 3d Thing, but it doesn’t really fit in with a game like this, unless you only use it to explore your park/world, and not in the building phase, which I’ll talk about later on in this entry.

I finally found out that you could actually enable this view in RCT3, something I haven’t noticed before years ago when I tried the game after it was released.

Now with this view enabled I can play it just as I would play the original game, which is AWESOME!

You can see the big long “SHIZNIT” coaster, ha. looks and works the same as it did in the old titles of RCT.

The coaster you see in the background is my “Shiznit”.

I’ve been waiting a while now and hoping for a new version of the game with the classic gameplay and controls. Better/updated graphics, and AI, but the same gameplay, and this entire time I never realized that it already existed in the 3rd game in the series, but all I had to do was enable it.

Last week I started playing RCT3 last week, and I’m so glad that I did. I really can’t see myself going back and playing RCT2 again, unless I discover some huge weird bugs, and limits in RCT3 that I haven’t noticed yet, which might happen.

I’ve been playing in SandBox mode, which is what I always play the game in, same as in the first 2 versions of RCT (in RollerCoaster Tycoon 1 you had to hack the maps to have a open/sandbox park to build whatever and play in),
So far I’ve only encountered little bugs with making the paths, and land scaping, but nothing major. I don’t know if you can do as much with landscaping in RCT3, as you can in the previous titles, I haven’t really seen any complex parks that people have made online for download, all seem flat, but I know RCT3 comes with a hill/mountain making tool, which way outdoes the sample land raiser/lower tool in RCT1 and 2.

The Guests in RCT3 are way more intelligent than those in RCT2, The park staff are as well. In RCT1, and 2, Guests would ALWAYS get stuck and lost on the path some where. They would get stuck in the weirdest places, which makes no sense, and any realistic guest would be fine finding their way to a particular ride, or finding the exit of the park. So far I haven’t had any problems with this in RCT3, which makes converting from rct2 to 3 really worth it.

Also you can import most of the Coasters/rides that you custom built in the previous titles. I’ve imported my “Silver Bullet” and “The Shiznit” coasters, and they work just fine. I’ve imported my “Magic” coaster, but it crashed in RCT3 and would’ve killed guests, so I’ve given up on it, ha.

What’s even cooler now, is you can still take advantage of the 3d world of RCT3, and walk around inside of your park as a guest would, and also RIDE THE RIDES IN YOUR PARK! Nothing is cooler than being able to realistic ride a custom rollercoaster that you build! You could use third party tools to ride coasters you designed in previous titles, but the feature in RCT3 is so much better!

View of park while on the “Silver Bullet” coaster I designed.

So, if you love RCT1 and 2, and hate 3 become of the views, just simple change the view to “isometric”, and it’ll be just as it was in the original games, but with better graphics, simply goto the options menu and click the camera icon, and from the drop down menu under “control mode” select “Isometric”. Walla!! Now you have the classic view!

It’s actually really sad that I only just now discovered that I love this game. Atari recently announced that that they are working on a version 4! Which is even cooler.

Oh well, this game will give me something new and fresh to do until version 4 is releases.