Related Games / Roller Coaster Tycoon 3: Soaked!

Back in November, the next generation of the Roller Coaster Tycoon series was released, Roller Coaster Tycoon 3. Many people were expecting a lot out of this game, but the released brung many fans to a disappointment. The game just seemed...incomplete. It had major issues with bugs and horrible frame rates, bringing even the most powerful computers to their knees. These severe issues with the game did nothing but prevent the game from unlocking its potential.

But I stayed with it. After seeing Atari and Frontier release two patches which fixed most of the games issues (except for lag), I believed they did care about their fans, and was sure they would take the game in the right direction, and I was right.

Roller Coaster Tycoon 2, the sequel to Chris Sawyers incredible game, Roller Coaster Tycoon, left out many features that the original RCT offered. The expansions released by Atari were nothing but disappointing and upsetting. They were not even close to being as good as the Loopy Landscapes and Corkscrew Follies expansions for the original RCT. But now, the Soaked! Expansion for RCT3 is probably one of the greatest expansion packs released for the Roller Coaster Tycoon series, in a long time.

The pack, just released a few days ago, offers players the ability to make there own water parks along with a wide variety of slides and pools. These features have been wanted for quite a long time, and now we are finally getting them. Peeps can now walk through underwater pathways and view sea animals such as sharks, manta rays, and fishes swimming all over. Also, the peeps in your park can watch the whales and dolphins from your animal shows. Yes, along with the ability to make water parks, you can also customize your own whale and dolphin shows. Choose certain moves for your animals to do, such as flips, balancing beach balls, jumping through hoops etc. Synchronizing your shows with fireworks, laser shows, and fountains is always a plus too.

That brings me to the next big feature of the expansion, the improved RCT3 Mixmaster. In the original RCT3, players had the feature to make their own firework shows to show at night time to leave their peeps in awe. These shows also had the ability to be synchronized with music from your own mp3 libraries. In the Soaked! Expansion, Atari and Frontier have given you the opportunity to add laser and water shows to your fire works. The laser show options give players the ability to make their very own lasers, or use the default ones already given in the game. You can also change the angle of the lasers, and the same goes with the fountains. The laser editor is very easy to use, and can even be used to make drawings and messages on a wall, which I thought was a great addition to the game. Just this feature alone can give you hours of fun, making you own shows to light up the night sky!



As said in the official announcement of Soaked!, this expansion offers around fifty new rides, including the Hershey’s Storm runner coaster, The roller soaker, which is a coaster where peeps can dump gallons of water on the guests below. If they want to, Peeps can also jump onto water cannons nearby, and spray the people on the ride, or blast people just walking by. Many new coaster types have been added, making the list of coasters the largest ever in any Roller Coaster Tycoon game. One of my favorite rides, which is new, is the Giant Flume, a large water ride the sends guest down a rather steep drop into the waters below. The game originally came with a river rapids ride, but Atari and Frontier have now added a new type of rapids ride, which offers a much larger track, newer track options, and wider turns. They are great ride to use for an adventure theme. More flat rides have also been included, as well as many new water slides, for the pools. No more do you have to make a slide and connect it to the station with a chain lift. Now peeps can soar down steep slopes and dive into the pool with a big splash! The new slides are one of the features I have been waiting to show up for a while in RCT3, and now they are finally here. Peeps have new types of transportation. They can either choose from transport boats, or Hop on trams.



Another big feature in the game is the pools. In some ways, the pool designer is very limiting, but only in certain aspects. You can make pools as big as you want, customize the shapes and build as many levels you want. Along with the pool designer, you can also add in showers, wave machines, diving boards, lounge chairs, spas, and lazy rivers! There are many, many creative way to design your pools, but the things that I find very limiting are that you can’t change the colors of your lounge chairs, or the umbrellas. They will always be blue, which may get a little repetitive if you’re trying to be creative with your pool designs. Even though you can make spiral staircases, and cureved paths in your pool complexes, you can’t make them with normal paths in your park, and your are limited to only cobblestone tiles. It would have been great if the developers of the game gave you the ability to change the colors of the chairs and allowed for different tile types, but I guess I can live with it. They still look great, and are DEFINITELY fun to play around with. Maybe soon enough players will be able to show off their pool building skills





The Soaked! Expansion offers even more than what has been given above. The next I thing I will talk about is the new scenery. The are a few new themes offered in Soaked!, such as a City theme, which comes with cars, skyscraper pieces, and city building pieces, allowing you to build a beautiful city within your park, along with skyscrapers, car park buildings or regular office buildings. The set offers you plenty of pieces to let you get creative. There is also the Atlantis scenery set, and the tribal village pieces. Both of which also give plenty of new architectural possibilities, and will let you build something incredible. The Atlantis theming is very useful for building your very own underwater world the peeps can walk through with the underwater pathways. These new sets also offer new animatronics, such as sea monsters, larger crabs, submarines, large torches, sea creature guards, mermaids and much more. Coral rock pieces can also be placed under water along with new sea like plants to make you underwater view an incredible thing to look at for you and your peeps.





This brings me to another part of the game which just brings it all together. The water. The water in the game has been improved by a huge amount. If you have a good enough video card, you have the option of using the reflective water. The water now reflects the sun, more details in your park, as well as generating much more ripples, from rain, or just moving your mouse across the water. It is a really great effect which can add so much beauty and atmosphere to the surrounding areas in your parks. You also have the option to create your own waterfalls, which rides can go through, as well as paths. The water above is great, but the underwater view is even better. In the original RCT3, the underwater view looked rather dull and seemed rushed and incomplete. But, the developers have worked hard, and now the underwater view is unbelievable, with the water refracting the sunlight, and all. Objects far off in the distance seem shrouded in the deep waters, and as you come closer, they become more visible and clear, which adds a very realistic effect. As you rise from the water, water droplets run down the computer monitor, which I also find to be a very cool effect. Of course, if you get tired of that, there is always the option to turn it off in the options menu. Overall, the new and improved water graphics in this game are just amazing, and brings the whole water based theme of the expansion together.



[IMGhttp://www.frontier.co.uk/games/rct3soaked/screenshots1/images/Phantom523.JPG[/IMG]

Now, many of you have had questions concerning about the overall performance of the game. Well, now I can finally tell you. The overall FPS has IMPROVED. Atari and Frontier seemed to have worked hard to make this game more compatible with computers and even at a low FPS the movements are still quite smooth. Parks I couldn’t work on before are now playable and I can play around even more with them. Of course, those large monster parks such as Six Frag’s Ensueno Park can still really bring down your FPS to an extreme low. But now, I can at least fill a 128x128 park with water, mountains, trees, rides, and buildings everywhere, and get very smooth movements which make me extremely happy, since that is a standard size park.

Other cool features:

By naming a peep M Brookes, you may place walls and fences on the same tile as paths. While this is not an actual feature and is a cheat instead confuses me, but at least we now have the option.

There are no actual working, real parking lots, but you can “paint” the terrain with a tarmac texture and make fake parking lots, which gives a huge boost of realism.

I forgot to mention, there are TUNNELS. The tunnels take awhile to get used to, but coasters can go into a tunnel at any angle. For example, a coaster riding along diagonal track, can now enter tunnels without having to turn into straight track. A very useful feature for making better coaster designs IMO.

Land tiles are included so you can make your own underground rooms.

Speakers can be placed along paths, so guest can hear music at ant poing in the park.

There are now new objects, which give off fire, fog, mist and smoke effects, which can make for a very fun adventure ride.




The bad things:

The game still has a couple glitches that come up, but they can usually be taken care of by reloading the park.

Loading times take a little longer.

While the newer coaster types offer many new coaster elements, such as the Storm Runner's dive loop element, not all of the coasters have these newer elements, which can be very limiting in coaster designing.


In conclusion, The Soaked expansion pack is definitely worth its price. It offers tons of new game play features as well as many improvements that make it even more fun to play. Although a lot more could have been added, such as colorable pool items, different types of tiles for pool complexes etc., the game offers great fun and takes the RCT series to a new level.

My score:
8.5/10



*Some of these pictures are from the Beta Testers, and Gamespot.com,

Thanks for the review Kev. I know I'm going to enjoy playing around with this in the near future. It's kind of funny for me to see the underwater paths and theming coming out now cause I was just building those in LL. Something tells me it'll be a lot easier to do in this game.

I couldn't have said it any better!
Nice review.

It's kind of funny for me to see the underwater paths and theming coming out now cause I was just building those in LL. Something tells me it'll be a lot easier to do in this game.

It's funny for me that you said that because I was eventually going to do the same thing for a long ago planned-but-never-gotten-around-to project...only in RCT2.

Thanks for the review Kevin! I trust your opinion and am currently contemplating getting it soon. Happy building with your new set of tools!

my heart beat just went up a notch.

i can't wait for this game, i placed one on hold at my local EBGames no hope yet, sadly... ohhhh... damn i can't wait.


WAIT WAIT gotta question if you can do this for me Kev.

what are the new coasters, like can you give us the names and pics (if possible?)?
Also can you upgrade your older RCT3 parks from the Sandlot mode or does it need to be a totally new game with the Soaked additions?

Also how do you synch fireworks shows with music? or do you have to do that manually?

thanks...

ohhh.. i can't wait..

[font="Arial"]The game looks great. I'll never have a computer good enough to run it so it looks good, but I'll definitley be buying this whenever Target gets it... I'm too cheap to go to Gamestop or Best Buy to buy it when I can save four bucks.

And I don't think you mentioned this, or maybe even didn't know it, but someone at the Atari forums said that the transport rides (chairlift, railroad, monorail, etc.) work like transport rides and guests will actually ride them to get from one place to another rather than just riding it like a regular ride. I thought that was cool...

And I'm just getting into playing RCT3 for the first time. The computer I use is slow and kind of ruins the game 'cuz it momentarily freezes, but I'm getting use to it. I made a kick ass Screamin' Squirrel coaster though. I've finally built something in the game besides the Top Spin.[/font]

and to think "hoodlum" already cracked it.... *sigh*


oh well .

jesus, that looks incredible. Especially those waterfalls. I might just get this to play around with, even though my computer can barely handle rct2. Let's hope there's an improvement in speed like you said there was on my computer!

Metro

still, those waterfalls are a bit hard to create..... but i'll learn, i think


They do look beautiful, gonna play around with some slides now

Alright, I've been reading at other peoples comments at other sites.

Most people are experiencing improvements in FPS, BUT there are some people that are experiencing no changes at all. hmmm....

A few things I forgot to mention:

The scroll wheel function on the mouse can now me be used for browsing through windows. This makes it easier to select scenery, and other objects.

The CTRL feature is back, so now making buildings is much more easier and quicker

There are now 3d flowers (tulips) and roses. So, some you can't complain about the crappy 2D flowers.

The Guardian - I'll work on making a list of new rides along with screens...may take a while though. Any park you were working before you got Soaked! can still be played after it is installed, so you don't have to worry about starting a new park.

Yeah, it looks great, but half those coasters don't even have supports. It really kills the atmosphere. :\

Great review Kevin! I'll be picking this up next month for sure!

Just got it actually, looks pretty good, better then I expected [at least not another one of those WW/TT crap!].

Thank god for people like you Kevin. Thankyou so much.

I'll probably be buying this game in the near future.

Yeah, thanks...I never took the time to read through all the features this would have, but for an expansion pack, it seems really good. I might pick this up this weekend.

That last screen with the fire and stuff looks sweet, btw.

Alright, I've been reading at other peoples comments at other sites.

Most people are experiencing improvements in FPS, BUT there are some people that are experiencing no changes at all.  hmmm....

A few things I forgot to mention:

The scroll wheel function on the mouse can now me be used for browsing through windows.  This makes it easier to select scenery, and other objects.

The CTRL feature is back, so now making buildings is much more easier and quicker

There are now 3d flowers (tulips) and roses.  So, some you can't complain about the crappy 2D flowers.

The Guardian - I'll work on making a list of new rides along with screens...may take a while though. Any park you were working before you got Soaked! can still be played after it is installed, so you don't have to worry about starting a new park.

Sounds good...

Another question: is there a scenery limit, or can you use all the new stuff in Soaked AND the original RCT 3 in one game?

In other words, does it work like LL or RCT 2?


Looks like it's definitely worth getting.

There are no limits in choosing scenery.
You can you all the rides, scenery, and features the game offers in one park. Those limits with RCT1 and 2 are no longer a problem in RCT3.

Well, RCT 1 didn't have any limits besides how many attractions you can build in a map. It was how many tabs, etc... that I was concerned about.

And speaking of tabs, addressing Kevin's earlier post, good to see the scroll bar works on those. Cuz that was a HUGE pet peeve!

Yeah, that was probably the first thing the beta testers told them if they hadn't changed it already.

And speaking of tabs, addressing Kevin's earlier post, good to see the scroll bar works on those.  Cuz that was a HUGE pet peeve!

What tabs?