Rollercoaster Tycoon 4 Mobile review

by Dr_Worm on Apr 29th, 2014

The first two Rollercoaster Tycoon games have done well to stand the test of time, they’re still just as accessible, deep, and fun today as they were over a decade ago. Rollercoaster Tycoon 3 was the first where series creator Chris Sawyer was not directly involved in the project, but the game turned out to be pretty good, retaining what made the original games fun and including some new features like first-person coaster riding. There was a 3DS version as well, but it’s easily forgettable, essentially being a reworking of RCT3 with clunky controls. A PC version of Rollercoaster Tycoon 4 is allegedly on the way, but a mobile version is already available.

Rollercoaster Tycoon 4 Mobile does just about what you would expect from a game with “Mobile” at the end of its title – pandering with microtransactions. Personally, I think microtransactions are okay provided they’re done in a non-intrusive, cosmetic way, but to speed up arbitrarily long wait times is not the way to do it. Oh, you can play RCT4 Mobile without paying anything beyond the $3 admission fee, but it takes a very long time to do so. Not that there’s a whole lot to do in RCT4. I suppose the best way to review this game is to take a look at its earliest predecessor from 1999. That’s the previous millennium, folks.

In RCT1, there were several campaigns for you to try to complete, and the variety was awesome, including forests, deserts, lakes, cliffsides, even Antarctica – the environments present shaped the overall theme of your park that you could either adapt to, or just outright ignore. RCT4 Mobile has one small, flat patch of land amounting to a couple acres. No themes, no environments, just a straight up “park” setup that you plop generic rides onto. You can’t even landscape or terraform, it’s just flat. There isn’t even water, and you can’t add any.

The original Rollercoaster Tycoon had a lot of depth beneath its surface. A guest’s experience could be different depending on the placement of buildings, e.g. guests might get more sick if you have food places around intense rollercoasters, or might get lost if you don’t provide maps near the park entrance. In RCT4 Mobile, who cares? Just put stuff anywhere! You don’t even need paths, as guests will callously walk across your lawn to get on a ride. Speaking of paths, you don’t even have to make queue paths anymore, guests assemble in front of the gate for rollercoasters, and for other rides, just sort of phase right into them. Line length and wait time are nothing you have to consider anymore, and why should you? It’s not like Rollercoaster Tycoon is a managerial game or anything.

How much customization was there in the original Rollercoaster Tycoon? A lot. Not just deciding where things should go, but also how much rides should cost, how much to charge for entry to your park, the colors of paths, the colors of rides, the colors of each and every section of a rollercoaster, what music the rides play, how many times a coaster train loops around a track, how many cars are even on a train, I could go on and on. How much customization is there in Rollercoaster Tycoon 4 Mobile? Do I need to answer that question? You can’t do anything I previously mentioned in this paragraph, but you can still name your rides, and make your own custom rollercoaster… I guess.

Take a look at the screenshot below this paragraph. Notice how the steel rollercoaster (on the left) has a loop at the very top of it. This rollercoaster wouldn’t even work in any other Rollercoaster game. Notice how there’s no chain to carry the train up the slope. If a rollercoaster isn’t going fast enough to climb a slope, it’ll just slowly ascend as if there was a chain on it. This includes loops. Yes, seriously. Speaking of loops, notice how the wooden rollercoaster (on the right) has one, and how you couldn’t add loops to wooden rollercoasters in Rollercoaster Tycoon 1, let alone how there are no supports on it. No self-respecting guest would ride either of these coasters in the first game because of their impossibility, over-intensity, or dullness, but in RCT4 they just eat it up.

You can’t hire any handymen because the place just stays clean on its own. You can’t hire any mechanics because rides don’t need inspection, and if they break down, just tap the red wrench icon above it and ta-da! It’s fixed! You can’t hire any security because I guess everyone visiting your park is a nice person. You can’t do research and development because rides and attractions unlock at certain levels – oh yeah, you actually level up in this version, which you do by completing goals. These goals include “tap on this thing and then tap on this other thing” and “sign into Facebook and get people to play our stupid game.”

So what does RCT4 Mobile do that the other games don’t? Well, make you wait to build rides, for starters. At first it’s around 8 seconds, which is tolerable, but rides used to build instantaneously. Then rides and other buildings inexplicably take from 30 minutes to 12 hours. You can speed up the process with tickets, which is the equivalent of “energy” you see in a lot of Facebook games. The game is actually pretty generous about tickets, which you get from completing goals and can also use to buy certain things money is apparently not good enough to buy. At least it’s generous at first, then the prices ramp up.

Speaking of money, the currency in this game is some ambiguous “C” coin, not the real-life currencies present in RCT1 that you could actually choose between. You get more money by occasionally tapping bubbles with the “C” coins in them. Strangely, rides don’t generate money, only food places, hotels (which raises the maximum guest count for your park which didn’t exist before), and the main gate. You can also upgrade some buildings, sometimes with money, sometimes with tickets, either way takes time to accomplish. I’m not really sure what upgrading does for rides, but hotels further increase that maximum guest limit. The worst, however, is that building rollercoasters isn’t sequential, i.e. you don’t lost money in the process of building it, but rather a full bill is tallied when it’s done. Then you “build” it, which is just waiting a set amount of time.

As you might have figured, it doesn’t take long to run out of money or tickets. That’s why they included the convenient ability to spend real money to get more fake coins you’ll eventually run out of. Seriously, I don’t think I need to go on about microtransactions, there’s nothing I can say about them that hasn’t already been said, but when you design your game around encouraging people to spend real money on a consistent and constant basis, that’s just poor game design and poor business ethics. Rollercoaster Tycoon 4 is no exemption.

Despite my several paragraph rambling about the game, it’s really just the same old Facebook game you’ve either tried to play or seen your friends playing. Farmville, The Sims, Rollercoaster Tycoon 4 Mobile, what’s the difference? RCT4 Mobile even has the same type of music is these games, and it’s only one song that plays and gets obnoxious immediately. RCT1’s music was generated by the attractions, providing an atmosphere you set yourself, not some cheesy Sims-like music.

It’s also buggy, too. In the intro tutorial, when you build the Ferris wheel, you need to tap on a check mark above it to complete it. If you try to move it after it’s built, that check mark disappears and you can’t do anything. Nothing. You only have one map (there is no save management whatsoever), so you have to uninstall your game, reinstall it, do the tuturial again, and make sure you don’t screw it up. Sometimes when I return to the game I can’t tap on anything or zoom in, just scroll around. And other times, when I wake my iPad from sleep mode, the game crashes and I have to restart it.

As far as I’m concerned, the biggest, worst crime a game can commit is letting you feel like you’re wasting your time. Yeah, you’re wasting your time anyway, but you want to enjoy yourself, you don’t want to feel like you’re wasting your time. Rollercoaster Tycoon 4 Mobile commits this crime by making you wait to build anything, letting you build anywhere with no consequences to guest experience (therefore no consequence to you), and putting no managerial effort on the player’s part. It’s just a “that thing’s done, what’s next, that thing’s done, what’s next” pattern that gets old immediately. It’s also not even free-to-play. Charging me $3 for a mediocre game, and pressuring me to spend more of my money on gameplay that has so little player involvement?

It’s bad enough that it has such pitiful gameplay, but when such strong alternatives exist, it’s extremely hard to recommend. If you’re itching for a rollercoaster managerial fix, just go to GOG.com and get Rollercoaster Tycoon 1 for 6 bucks, or its sequel for 10. They’re both astronomically better games with no microtransaction pandering, and if your computer was purchased in the last decade, congratulations, you have a computer capable of playing them.

1 out of 5

Categories: Reviews