Theme Park Tycoon

A theme park is a wonderful place, but if the rides aren't thrilling enough to make you puke then they're clearly not doing their job. That's why they sell stuff like candy floss and toffee apples on every corner; by raising the odds of a vomit frenzy they're making themselves look good.

All of which brings us to Theme Park Tycoon. Is it good enough to make you sick? Nope. Is it bad enough to make you sick, then? Yep. It is any good at all? Ah, now there's the question.

This is a strategy/simulation game where you take control of a theme park, your aim being to raise customer satisfaction and make pots of cash. Building a series of rides and attractions will bring in the crowds, but players must also maintain standards of cleanliness and durability so they don't fail on the job. Another factor is spending money on research so you can build bigger and better attractions, after which your imaginary puke-stats will soar into the stratosphere.

The playing field is a three-dimensional grid, with various zones on which you do the building. Navigation is via a square cursor and a series of menus from which you select options (construction, staffing, management, etc). The initial game is Career mode, divided into stages where players must meet certain criteria to progress, but once these are finished an Infinite is unlocked, where a single campaign can last for, well, infinity.

First, the good news: if you're a fan of the strategy management genre, then you'll love the range of options presented here. You can tinker with the wages of your staff, raise or lower entrance fees, or even reinforce the bolts on your rides. All the minutiae of running a theme park are humorously replicated, and the game is so fully featured it could rival a budget PC title for entertainment value.

The problem is, you're not playing the game on a PC, you're playing it on a mobile phone, and the demands of managing a theme park in real-time make you acutely aware of the difference. The busier the park becomes, the harder it is to manage, and checking on the various rides and conveniences becomes a frantic scurry. Once things burst into flame and get shut down, you find yourself wishing for a keyboard and mouse to make it all better.

Another consequence of the park becoming busy is that, as the zones fill up with attractions, each individual unit becomes impossible to distinguish. Whilst the graphics are colourful and vibrant, the park soon became a messy blur of flashing pixels and moving sprites. It looks a bit like vomit, in fact.

Playing Theme Park Tycoon is an emotional rollercoaster. Up to a certain point, it's a brilliantly designed game you will certainly enjoy. But in the later stages it becomes too busy and too complex. Events can't be properly managed using a conventional keypad and small screen, which makes things so frustrating that wailing and gnashing of teeth are pretty much inevitable. It's a generous effort, but in the end Theme Park Tycoon is a victim of its own ambition.