Screamride Review

"Like Rollercoaster Tycoon"

Campaign

Screamride is the next family focused game from Frontier which provided us with Zoo Tycoon last year which was alright, though lacked many features that fans of that series desire. This time around we're building coasters, destroying things with coasters and just riding coasters. This game I felt was largely based off Rollercoaster Tycoon hence the tagline up there, though it does many things that makes it a unique play on this. It's also extremely family friendly, yet many hardcore gamers may enjoy it as well due to those classic feelings and thrills of playing with roller coasters. Another aspect that makes the difference here is that the game takes place in some sort of far future with some interesting technology aspects. For the review I've broken each campaign section into its own category below so you can read about whichever one is your fancy or them all which would be best I suppose. Each campaign is broken into six series consisting of varying level amounts. On these levels you 're trying to gain commendations to continue which is a system I like and don't like at the same time. I'm quite sick of games forcing you to gain basically stars to continue as some of us just have difficulty on particular levels, which makes progress impossible at times.

ScreamRider

This campaign has you basically driving or riding the coaster around the track in order to gain the most points possible by keeping everyone safe while also trying to keep up the thrill factor. This was cool most of the time whipping around the tracks set up by the developers and trying to get the best scores. Though honestly the later parts were quite difficult to get enough points for moving forward. There's neat moves here and this route of campaign is for those that love the adrenaline drive of going around tracks. It sounds simple though there are many minor aspects to going about the track that effect your ending score target.

Demolition Expert

The Demolition Expert actually was rather annoying at the start and it was more frustrating than enjoyable. That's until I got the hang of it as I love destroying things with the physics here being fantastic. They remind me somewhat of what has been demoed for the upcoming Crackdown game. It's almost too tech demo like, though it's so satisfying seeing massive skyscrapers plummet to the ground. You start off with a sort of catapult type machine similar to Angry Birds which rotates around any you need to determine the shot. I'll mention that the "A" button when held gives somewhat of an aiming system. The machine can also be adjusted by the power you want to put behind the shot and there's differing types of ammo eventually available. Even with aiming the machine usually never quite goes where you want it to which can be frustrating further. After getting used to this it does switch up to a track launcher based on coaster riding which is a bit easier to control though basically the same objectives.

Engineer

I believe I had the most fun with the Engineer career which has you either fixing, building or creating coasters. There's certain objectives you have with each project so check on those while building as I often went off on my own to build a coaster only to have it fail since I didn't use enough track or etc. You have a wide variety of pieces for most occasions and it's generally well set up for you. I also noticed this mode is much more time consuming than the others which is fine since you're building coasters. It's especially time consuming if you mess up and need to do patches, though sometimes you get it perfect off the bat and it works great. You'll have to compensate for many things while building in this mode though it's great for people that enjoy engineering, fixing or building things.

Sandbox

The sandbox is another area which actually plays a big part of the game despite being separate and not as shown compared to the main career options. In sandbox you're able to create and build whatever sort of creation you want from the three modes up above. This is where those that just want to build and play with various coasters get a blank space to do so. Newer areas and more objects are of course unlocked through campaign completion which will give you a vast amount of tools to use. When you've finished your coaster project there's a ton of fancy extra things to do like setup picture view angles, create objects and set goals for players to get. Once that's all set you can upload them for the community to play and likewise there will be a ton of future coasters built that you can play on. I've already seen a lockness monster amongst other mega coasters which you can play on which is fantastic.

Gameplay

The graphics in Screamride are alright, though the vistas are actually quite great to look at while doing your in-game tasks. The environments feel secluded yet well alive with blimps, people and other random things going on in the background. Objectives are laid out well though some user controlled areas could use some work like my complaints above in the careers. When messing up or rebooting things which happened often I was impressed with how quickly everything was rendered as it really didn't delay my continued play. Coaster creation is very simple and there's some great tools out there to make whatever you want within this space. It's also family friendly once more so younger individuals will definitely enjoy it and I'm bit older though I had a good amount of fun riding coasters along with building them.