The next Roller Coaster Tycoon?

Author's Rating:

Pros: Easy to play, decent graphics, fun to watch.

Cons: Very basic, no depth, bad 3rd person mode.

The Bottom Line: 
If you like an easy to play game, then you should try Ultimate Skate Park Tycoon.

Author's Review
I went to my friend’s house recently and he told me that he had a new game that I would like. He said it was called Ultimate Skate Park Tycoon. I thought to myself, “Well its about time they make a game like this.”

It’s pretty obvious what this games all about. You pick an area (only 3 to choose from, small, medium, and large.) to build your own skateboard park in. You can build ramps, rails, half pipes, quarter pipes, pools, benches and tons more. If it’s skate-able, you can build it. You can also build skate shops, bathrooms, and concession stands—your basic stuff to keep your visitors happy. You can even obtain sponsors from different companies in order to get you park more popular and get new kinds of ramps and stuff like that.

Ultimate Skate Park Tycoon even has a 3rd person perspective mode where you can take control of any skater in your park and play as them. Sounds good right? Well, its no Tony Hawk but its still “playable”. I’ll get to this later.

Graphics
Graphics is always an easy topic to start on. When I first entered the game, I was a little disappointed. They give you a horrible angle from above that makes the game look like Ultima Online. You can easily change the view though with the controls at the top. Once you have the view lookin’ good, you’re good to go. The graphics are “ok”. The game is in 3-D which is a plus. But there is something with the characters movements that’s a bit weird. The skaters look great.. they have very smooth models and nice skins. But when they move, instead of turning fluently, they kind of jerk their way around. Also, when they go to do a trick, they ollie, and then magically “pop” on a rail and then “pop” off of it. Other than that, its very entertaining to see a bunch of little skaters doing their thing.
7.5/10

Sound
Jeez, I really wanna give this section a high rating… But I just can’t. The sound effects are pretty basic. You hear the board popping and the wheels turning. Nothing else really. Now to the music—When I first heard the music, I was so excited. This game has some really awesome punk rock in it. I got through the first 3 songs, and then all of a sudden they start repeating. After playing for around 2 hours, I realized that the game only has around 3 songs, each only being approximately 2 and a half minutes. What a bummer. For that reason, I have to give the sound a mediocre score.
7/10

Gameplay
Hmmm. This section is a little odd. The first thing that I found weird was that there are only 3 “levels” too choose from. Once you actually get into the game, it can be pretty fun. Building ramps is easy. You just select a category such as rails, pick the certain rail you want, and place it down. You can also use the right mouse button to rotate the objects. The control here is a snap. But it isn’t so easy for the 3rd person mode…

Ultimate Skate Park Tycoon lets you skate through your park. The only problem with this is that the control is horrible. You can barely move your skater around, and the trick system is so horrible that its not even worth it to try. For example, to do a kickflip, you have to press “ctrl” to ollie, then in mid air you have to hit “ctrl, up, down”. This makes it incredibly hard to do cool combos. I’m really disappointed with this. The physics are all messed up in this game to. When you ollie, you seem to “float” a lot. Pretty weird.

Watching your skaters skate can be fun though. They do some crazy stuff, like a kickflip bluntslides pop shove-it out. Gnar. You can right click on any skater to see a list of every trick they have done, along with their stats. There’s also a button to make the skater crash…heh.

Building ramps can be fun.. but sadly, you are very limited. You can’t just make a ramp, and pop a rail on top of it to make a ramp with a rail going down it. It seems that you can just make ramps and rails and place them on flat ground. This gets boring after a while. I would have loved it if I could make some insane skate park by stacking a bunch of tamps, and then watch a bunch of people skate it. But you cant really do that. You can only make basic stuff.
6/10

For only 20 dollars, this game may be worth it to some. The game gets kind of boring pretty quickly since you can’t really do much. And since there’s no real point, this will bore some people. This game is more of a game for people who like to just screw around. This can be fun, but don’t expect too much from it. Its not supposed to be some in-depth simulation. It’s just a very, very, very, basic game. So if you like that, then this may be for you. But personally, I need some depth to keep me interested. And don’t think that the 3rd person mode will keep you into the game. Because it wont. Too frustrating and not worth your time.

I guess it all depends on the type of game you like. If you can’t stand games where there’s too much to think about, and too much stuff going on, then you’ll love this game. Like I said before, its very basic. But for me, this game didn’t keep my interest for long. It’s the same old same old, over and over again. I would recommend this for younger kids since its very easy to play and theres not a lot to think about.

Thanks for reading, and please leave me comments with what ya think. Thanks again, and I hope my review helped.