Customer Reviews

Thrillville: Off the Rails

5 star:		(22)
4 star:		(14)
3 star:		(9)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

When I first got a Wii, this was one of the first games that I rented - now I must own it!! I wasn't sure what to expect, having never played the original, but I thought that riding roller coasters sounded like it might look cool. Well, first off: it DOES look cool! Riding the rides you created is a lot of fun, especially when you can add in all kinds of death-defying tricks that could never exist in the real world! You can ride all the other rides too, nothing is off-limits for gameplay. Unfortunately, the ones that merely spin around can make you almost as sick as similar rides in real life.

The minigames are hit-or-miss: some are forgettable while others are downright addictive. All are cute and well done, just depends on what you like. Personally I couldn't get enough of shooting food items at other food items, OMG it is just as silly as it sounds and I was up playing until 3am! The minigames you must play in order to "train" new park personnel are extremely fun too. There are so many different kinds of games that everyone is sure to find one or two that they can't put down.

The only thing keeping this from being a 5-star game (for me) is the inane interactions with the park guests. You basically have the same very short list of interactions for nearly every visitor, nothing flows together like anything resembling an actual conversation, and I generally found it to be cumbesome and annoying. But, a minor drawback in an overall fun game.

Great for all ages, fun graphics, lots of variety, and weirdly addictive minigames make for a must-own game!

I bought this for my 10 year old because I thought the commercials made it look like a fun game where you can build rollercoasters and run a theme park... which of course it is! But what he's really enjoying is running around 'talking' to the other people visiting the theme parks and getting them to 'like' him. Typically Cody has a very hard time with most Wii games because he's used to using the Playstation or Gamecube controllers which don't require alot of movement. This game has managed to successfully keep his interest and even teach him a little about interacting with other people (listening to what they say and responding appropriately or talk about things that interest them). I really never considered this game a teaching game when I bought it but he's having a great time and developing some people skills - it's a win win situation!

My family has had a Wii now for 11 months. Just when I think it can't get any better, I'm wrong. Of the 12 top games we already own, this one surpasses all of them. As much fun for Mom (me) as it is for my 8 and 10 year olds... and yes, they beat me in almost every one of these minigames played in Battle (multiplayer) mode.

I've wanted this game for a while, but waited until the price was down to buy it. I think even if I'd paid the original full price, I would have been happy with my purchase. The game is a good deal of fun, but not really in the ways I expected.

What I expected, in a nutshell, was a game like Roller Coaster Tycoon, one of my favorite PC games ever---a game where you really design a park from the bottom up, with control over where the rides are placed, what scenery is around, all kinds of prices, even terrain. This game doesn't have that. The parks look and feel like completed parks when you first see them. You have control only really over what ride to put where and minor things like color. You do get more control over roller coasters, but not where they start or end---you can design all kinds of twists and turns and drops quite easily, but somehow you never get the feel you get in RCT---that you really have to work hard to make a great coaster and that you get a lot of feedback from your customers about how much they like it, or don't.

The customers in this game SEEM like you can interact with them a lot, but they are too easily satisfied---they almost always just love your park---and once you figure out what topics they are into, it's easy to choose from a list of phrases what to talk to them about to make them friends. In RCT, you are more concerned about your people as a group.

The real fun here is the extra value---you can play all the games you place in the park, and they are GOOD games! It's really a collection of minigames far better than any other I've found for the Wii, with tremendous variety---lots of shooting games, Bejeweled type games, games that look like Halo, a minigolf game you can design and play, a dirt bike game that's really interesting---and lots more! The games don't really relate much to the park---you don't feel like you are playing them as part of the game but rather just as a break from the game. You can win prizes you can give people, but this is quite hard to do, and you never really see the prizes, you just know you have them.

The game has lots of goals that let you unlock new types of parks, and you can try to complete certain goals or you can just unlock things by chance by making a good park.

It's a little tricky to figure out things like how to save, and it's a little confusing to understand exactly where you are in the parks you own---each park has 3 parts which are quite separate and seem like whole new amusement parks, which confused me at first.

Overall, get this game for the minigames and for the coaster design feature. Don't expect a feel like a Sim game or RCT, and you won't be disappointed!

Wow, this game is packed with stuff to do. Something for everyone. Mom enjoyed the mission challenges in 5 categories: build, games, guests, upkeep, and manage. Dad liked the classic-style arcade games. Seven year old liked exploring the many parks and solving the sabotage mysteries. Five year old loved to build coasters, golf courses, and buggy courses. The music (including Miley Cyrus and Aly and AJ) and the DJ background is pretty hip. The dance/cheerleeding game is terrible, but the shooting/treasure hunting games are fun. Pick your park manager character, dress, customize, then go design your amusement park, meet the many customers, and play the 34 multiple minigames. A really good buy if you like variety.

I just got a wii and a little while later got this game. I had high expectations for this game and was really disappointed. The "whoa" coasters aren't very whoa, there's no overhead view either.. I don't mind that too much but you can't choose the layout or scenery whatsoever! And sometimes that's really annoying cause in several of the parks there's thing that you REALLY wish you could get rid of. And it doesn't make good use of the wii's motion-sensetive featurs, the only thing that keeps me from getting rid of it is the awesome mini games.

I have been owning a Wii for over a year now and my 10yo son says Thrillville is the best Wii game ever. He loves making his own rollercoasters and then riding them. He says his other games get boring, but this one NEVER does because there is so much to do.

This game is terrific. First my daughters (5 & 7) played it, then the hubby picked it up, then me. Now we have to set the timer because everyone wants to play it and its easy to lose track of time.
I have always enjoyed Sims games but they start to feel like work and can be stressful. This is similar to a Sims game but the work is fun and doesnt feel like work at all. For example, you need to train an entertainer for the park, you teach her to dance by doing some DDR type moves with the wiimote and nunchuck. Same with the park cleaner, you get to run around like a ghostbuster and vacuume up vomit and trash. Ok, sounds gross I admit, but totally fun.
The parks are huge and the pre-built coasters, carnival games, booths, etc are awesome. Its fun to put down a hat and balloon booth then see a few minutes later the customers wearing/holding them. The bumper cars are a blast and so are most of the other mini games.
This is a must have for any Wii owner in my opinion!!

I was not sure if this would be a good game for all of my kids but they love it. From 8 years old to 14 years old, it is a giant winner. This seems to be the first game they go to play right now. They really enjoy building the coasters. It is fun but also makes you think. Highly recommended for all ages.

Overview

I bought this game hoping to get a console equivalent of Rollercoaster Tycoon, the quintessential amusement park simulator. While Thrillville is not as good in many respects, the 50 mini games included on the disc make the purchase more than worthwhile.


Rollercoaster Construction

Undoubtedly the most fun part of an amusement park simulator should be its rollercoasters. Thrillville borrows heavily from RC Tycoon's style of building rollercoasters, but the style is far more carefree, surrendering a lot of the strategy and satisfaction involved in RC Tycoon. Whereas RC Tycoon forced you to plan carefully and consider physics and intensity, Thrillville encourages you to just go for it, ignoring physics and gravity entirely, and still providing a steady stream of enthusiastic riders even when you provide drops and turns so intense that they'd kill most real people. The Wii remote interface further encourages this approach with its loose, fluid control style. It's a little tricky to get the track to do exactly what you're planning, but if you just let go and start clicking away, the track almost seems to develop a mind of its own, coming up with crazy drops, rises, and turns in response to every little movement of the hand, leaving you with something pretty fun that you really hadn't been planning. One nice bonus that Thrillville provides here which RC Tycoon really should have is an option to have the game finish the track for you. In RC Tycoon, you could spend an hour trying to find a way to connect what you'd been building back to the original starting track at the end. Thrillville can do it for you with the touch of a button. All in all, Thrillville's ride construction is still fun, but it lacks the strategy and planning of RC Tycoon, creating something simpler and mindless.


PARK MANAGEMENT

In RC TYCOON, you could control every aspect of your park, from where you placed your rides to the color and style of a flower bed that you chose to install. Thrillville offers significantly less freedom, giving you absolutely no control over park layout or appearances, and designating specific areas where you can clumsily install shops and stalls and other specific areas where you can build Roller Coasters. It doesn't really allow you to be creative or give the park any personality beyond what the game designers gave it. It also severely limits the amount of Roller Coasters you can build (and no, you can't have two coasters intertwining or anywhere near each other for that matter). This aspect of the game is a tremendous disappointment.


STAFF

Whereas RC Tycoon prompted you to use real strategy in deciding how many janitors, engineers, and entertainers to hire and what routes to give them, Thrillville measures the staff's effectiveness in terms of how well you can "train" them by playing simple mini games that mimic the most simplified aspects of their jobs. Again, less strategy and creativity, but it's easier and mindless.


INTERACTION

One of the game's more ambitious efforts is to give you an actual character in the park, representing you, which can ride rides, play games, and interact with guests. It's a great idea, but the end results are limited. You don't have all that much freedom in designing the look of your character, and you have even less freedom when talking with guests. Possible topics of conversation are made available to you or disappear with no apparent rhyme or reason, ultimately leaving you with no better option than to tell a guest that you like cold pizza because the "How are you?" and "matchmaker" options have both inconveniently vanished. Personally, I'd like to be able to mess with my guests. Sometimes the game will allow you to act disappointed that a little kid doesn't know who you are and then pretend that you've been his best friend for years (which inevitably creeps him out), but then the game only leaves you with kind conversation topics to choose from when you were hoping to see the conversation go down in flames. Finally, while being able to move around the park and ride the rides as a person is a refreshing change, there is no option to view them from omniscient mode. In RC Tycoon, you could watch from a distance and see all your rides operating at once, watching traffic flow, and enjoying the multitude of stories taking place in the park you built. In Thrillville, it's one small area at a time.


Mini Games

Even if everything I've written thus far has turned you off to this game, the mini games alone make this game worth trying. The game contains 50 mini games (though some are only variations of other mini games) which can be accessed either by installing and playing them in your park or by choosing party mode from the main menu, which allows up to four players to take on their choice of mini games (assuming you have four remotes and nunchuks). I'm not generally a fan of mini games, and I've played my share of awful cheap-o mini game compilations for the Wii, but many of the mini games in Thrillville are downright awesome. For one thing, many of the mini games are blatant thefts of classic games from older systems. There's a version of Atari's Slotcar Racer, Nintendo's Gradius, and even a version of the BMX competition from California Games. There are a variety of shooting games as well, and a few games that are probably original -- Sumo Spaceships being my favorite in multiplayer. With 50 mini games, and most of them being better than average, you could ignore the amusement park aspect of Thrillville all together and still get your money's worth here.


All in all, Thrillville is a simplified version of Rollercoaster Tycoon without the strategy and opportunities to be creative, but with a more mindless, effortless approach to amusement park building. That plus the 50 1-4 player mini games (many of which are thoroughly entertaining) makes this game a great value. It may not be the game that you spend hours and hours working on, but it may end up being the classic that you pull out every time your friends are over just so that you can play those favorite mini games a few more times.