Thrillville: Off the Rails (Xbox 360)

GameSpot editors' review

• CNET editors' rating: 3.5 stars Very good
  Detailed editors' rating
  Overall score: 7.5 (3.5 stars)

• Reviewed by:
  Aaron Thomas
• Reviewed on: 11/05/2007
• Released on: 10/09/2007
• Originally published on GameSpot: Thrillville: Off the Rails (Xbox 360) Review

Many games promise that they're "fun for the entire family," but very few actually deliver an experience that can be enjoyed by both kids and adults alike. Thrillville: Off the Rails is one game that makes good on this promise. Whether building your own amusement park or playing the games and riding the rides, there's never a shortage of ways to have fun. Thanks to the inclusion of 50 minigames, Off the Rails is one of the better party games out there as well.

Thrillville's single-player campaign places you in the role of a theme park manager. Your goals include making the guests happy, ensuring the critics give your park a fair shake, and preventing a rival theme park from ruining your park's reputation. You start off with one theme park broken into three distinctly themed areas. As you complete missions like playing minigames, building certain rides, and managing staff, you're awarded thrill points, which eventually unlock new parks, each with its own theme.

There are simulation aspects to Off the Rails, but nothing as deep as other "Tycoon" games. Sure, you can set prices, run advertising campaigns, and even borrow money, but there's very little benefit to be gained by doing so, and money is never a problem. Most of your time will be spent placing rides, stalls, and games, and, of course, building coasters. Placing new attractions is a piece of cake: Scroll through a menu until you find what you want to place, locate a good spot, and press a button to drop it into place. Unfortunately, you're a bit limited as to where you can place buildings as well as how many you can place. Each building consumes power, and each of your park's three areas has a limited amount of power available. This seems to be the game's way of making sure the frame rate can keep up, but it's frustrating to have the room and the money to build something, only to be told that there's not enough power available. This doesn't ruin the game, but it would have been nice to be able to place more stuff.

Building coasters is surprisingly simple. If you're not into designing your own roller coaster, you can purchase prebuilt rides with the press of a button. But that would mean depriving yourself of one of the game's best aspects. It's really easy to build a crazy coaster. All you have to do is pick what type you want (wooden, hanging, flume, and the like) and then start dropping pieces into place. The interface is intuitive, and while the camera can sometimes be frustrating and the auto-track-completion rarely finds a solution to ending your ride, you can complete your first coaster in a matter of minutes. Of course, you're going to want to make your signature ride a memorable experience for your guests. This is where the "whoa" pieces come into play. Flaming hoops, brick walls, loops, corkscrews, and more can all be added by choosing a whoa piece from the menu and dropping it into place. You won't want to go too crazy, though, because you don't want the ride's nausea rating to be too high. Actually, that's not true. While your guests may think they don't want a ride that's too insane, what better way to end a ride than by not ending it? By not connecting your track back to the station, you can create a "crash coaster." This is exactly what you think it is--the car reaches the end of the track and flies right off. It sounds insane, but because you parachute gently to the ground, the kids love it, even as their parents watch in horror from the ground.

Building rides is just a small part of the Thrillville experience because everything you build can be ridden or played. There are 50 minigames included here. Many of these are knockoffs of arcade games like Gauntlet, Offroad, and 1942, but there are some original games to be found and most of them are a lot of fun. First-person shooters; puzzle, racing, and flying games; platformers--you name it, it's here. You can play these minigames anytime you like, and you can even play them from the game's main menu in a party game format. The game does a nice job of integrating them into the campaign. You might need to get a high score in a particular game so that you can win a prize with which to bribe a critic, or you might need to chase off some annoying robots that hack your attractions so that they can ride for free by shooting a bunch of them in a futuristic first-person shooter. These missions come along just often enough that you'll appreciate the break from running your park, but not so often that you'll feel like they get in the way.

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Thrillville: Off the Rails (Xbox 360): $10.49

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