Sorry, I can't recommend this one although the artwork and the technical aspects of the multi-platform engine with lighting and movement (except the nauseating ghost world effects) is well done. The plot is overly self-referential with adventure games effectively derailing itself especially in the end. In the first third the puzzles are more structured and somehow solvable, but become horrible unconnected guesswork in the end. Multiple playable characters lead to repetitive dialog and even more confusing puzzle interactions. Characters lack charm and mystery. The humor is pretty flat. I was expecting so much more. Wadjet Eye Games showed how the genre evolved. Ron Gilbert was sadly too much stuck in nostalgia.
What sounded like first preson GTA in the Savannah turned out to not work well. There was a horrible glitch which made gras which is everywhere have white edges when playing on Windows 7. Tried to play it on Linux with wine and surprise: no visual glitches. Usually it is the other way round. Graphics and sounds of the weapons are convincing. However the gameplay is really horrible. You get not attached at all to the story. Enemies are not really a challenge, but more annoying as they pop-up randomly while you get out of save house or try to find a new mission. Every scenery looks identical so I found myself driving with the full map enabled all the time. Features like grabbing diamonds or upgrading weapons seem like rushed ways to somehow motivate the player to get through this repetitive mess. It did not work for me. Uninstalled it immediately. Should have tried a demo first instead of wasting my money here.
I got this in a games collection when it was budget ware. The idea seemed promising but the game was a huge disappointment. It is a mix of round based and real time strategy. You hire and give orders to your gangsters at the weekend and they will do them in real-time throughout the week. However you can't control them when in real-time mode which is very annoying and boring to just watch most of the time. There is also a huge learning curve for building a proper crime industry without getting bankrupt. Graphics are very repetitive, but look mostly okay. Still: the game was no fun for me. I uninstalled it pretty quickly.
It's kind of a small software update that adds a scenario editor and expansion pack with some more rides that does not justify a new release. As the price difference here on GOG is not so big it's not that much of a rip-off nowadays, but don't buy 1 & 2 together as they are mostly identical. I did not like the new scenarios too much. There is more crappy looking decorations. The engine is quite limited here in adding houses and you see that Chris Sawyer had maybe one designer so the props are repeated too often. In fact I immediately downloaded http://www.ginever.net/files/file/4-rollercoaster-tycoon-2-community-content-pack/ which has the RCT 1 scenarios converted to RCT 2 which look a lot more decent. Still it's the addicting and fun Rollercoaster Tycoon gameplay. The isometric perspective is great for building a rollercoaster because the current squares are highlighted and you always know where you are. I also like the intuitive construction interface that some game magazines complained about. A true classic.
I loved the successor Transport Tycoon. The graphics were nice at that time. Even today it shows nicely crafted landscapes with few pixels. The learning curve was low and playing your own scenarios was very motivating because you always had something to do: tweak that connection, add a new line here, fix some traffic james there. For people who like simulations and models trains the perfect match. The updated graphics using the outdated Rollercoaster Tycoon engine are very low detailed. It looks a little more realistic because of larger wagons and rounder curves. Building your tracks works okay for roads or rollercoasters, but it is quite painful for the important railways compared to the successor. You always and up with endless stone bridge constructions which look very awful. The idea of creating cheap tracks that fit into the landscape is completely gone. The AI is terrible and still cheats a lot when doing the expensive terain modifications at much too high frequency. As most people here I recommend the Open Source reimplation http://www.openttd.org/ It has many usability improvements. Nice retro graphics, full internet support and a very active modding community.
