Thrillville: Off the Rails

How time flies. It was about this time last year that we first got invited to visit Thrillville, at which time we awarded it a reasonably positive score, applauding its scale but finding fault with almost all the minutiae. It wasn't bad, but it wasn't great, either.

Here we are again, then, one year down the line. Question is, has enough been done to overcome the shortcomings that sunk what could have been a great game?

Far be it for us to ruin any dramatic build-up to the verdict, but you've probably already scrolled down and read the score anyway, right? So, the answer is: A little bit.

If you're a veteran of the original, the first thing you'll feel is familiarity. Indeed, that's pretty much what you'll feel for the whole duration, because Off the Rails is largely a case of more of the same. Read our previous review and almost all of it applies here, too: the personal-view park management, tightly knit mission structure and an intuitive coaster designer; all here, all with very little change.

That's not altogether a bad thing, though. Having hundreds of missions provides a focussed yet flexible progression path just as it did in the prequel, constantly giving you something to strive for and countless different ways of achieving that goal.

The parks themselves are as inventive as before, too, each themed area laden with gigantic mechanical decals towering over the visitors – anything from firing rayguns to bawling oversized babies. While we may have gushed about the visuals last time around, though, today things are decidedly less impressive. Generally, the aesthetics aren't any worse but time has taken its toll on the angular, poorly textured character models and a noticeable increase in graphical glitching and clipping problems does little to curry favour.

To the differences, then. First is an increased emphasis on personalisation, something which should help stamp individuality on the already largely pre-built parks. It should, but doesn't. In actuality, it boils down to a few different clothing options for your avatar and the ability to place a hugely limited number of themed decals on attractions. Neither offering is able to give an extra sense of identity to your creations and probably isn't even worth the words we've already spent on them.

Also new is the addition of 'woah' pieces to the coaster track designer. These are implausible stunt segments – brick walls, pendulums, cannons and so on – that inject a much needed wow factor into the rides, and the desire to see what all of them do will doubtless spur many into building their own designs.

The area that has clearly been given the most attention in the past year's development efforts, though, concerns the mini-games. While the rotten elements of last year's batch still fail to satisfy – notably the awful rhythm-action 'Entertainer' game (deliberate inverted commas, there), hugely average mini-golf and racing cars that still manage to handle with all the grace of a Dalek – many of the new games are surprisingly playable, including a genuinely excellent Excitebike (motocross) clone and a shameless copy of Puzzle Bobble that nevertheless manages to add something new to the experience.

It's encouraging that this proves the area targeted for most improvement, because it was the most disappointing aspect of the original, totally undermining the 'experience everything' tenet that the game ended up hanging itself on. So, displaying added polish in this area is something worthy of much praise.

Well, keep the champagne cork in the bottle for a minute. Yes, it's an improvement, but it all still feels slightly shallow. By splitting its personality between park building and park experiencing, Off the Rails still comes across as if both aspects of the game are half-baked – the construction suffers from not allowing enough personality or customisation to truly feel 'yours', while many of the mini-games are above average, none are excellent.

And yet, gosh, we feel so mean. Thrillville: OTR's scope is laudable. That it manages to cram so much into a UMD is astonishing, and it genuinely is a better game than its predecessor – even a title we feel comfortable recommending to those looking for a easy route into the theme park genre. The problem, though, is that it just doesn't add up to a truly satisfying, long-term whole. Just like stuffing yourself with candy floss, you'll enjoy it and might end up feeling full, but you won't be nourished in any significant way.