Screamride Review
Developer: Frontier Developments
Publisher: Microsoft Studios
Platform: Xbox One and Xbox 360
Release Date: Out Now
The initial hopes of reliving my Roller Coaster Tycoon days were dashed once I got a chance to spend some time with Screamride. Despite the obvious rollercoaster theme that is where the similarities end. There is a distinct lack of depth to Screamride coupled with the disconnected game modes makes it feel more like a lucky bag of mini games than a cohesive package.
Screamride doesn’t have a traditional career mode to invest hour of your time, instead the developers have decided to go the missions route. You need to complete the set tasks, or achieve a certain mark, in each mission to unlock the next one and so on. There are some bonus objectives to help add a little bit more life to the experience.
The game is split into three very different sections. An “in-cart” mode, a demolition mode, and a building mode.
The engineer mode as you might suspect is the mode where you need to build. This is the closets you get to the Tycoon days as you are tasked to build your own ride. Rather than just let you build what ever you want the game provides challenges for you to use certain set pieces in your design with the overall goal being to make the ride fun for the people on it.
Screamride is the mode that brings out the speed demon in you as you take on the role of passenger in a sort of rollercoaster simulator. The idea is simple to get the highest score possible by going as fast as you can without coming off the tracks. While this is at first an exhilarating game mode as you turn into corners avoid obsticles and boost over wild jumps is quickly descends into an on rails (pardon the pun) game of timed button presses.
Finally Demolition mode involves flinging carts at buildings, boards, boats and airships to see how much damage you can do. It is kind of fun to sit back and watch the destruction but it was the least appealing of all three modes personally once the novelty had worn off.
However you can decide to just play in the sandbox mode which incorporates aspects from all three. Here I was most at home, I could sit for hours just designing and building my rollercoasters and attractions.
If you build a track that you think is suitably impressive that you want to show it off to the world you can share it with your friends, this also works the other way and if they have a fun looking track you can download it and test it out.
Screamride is not an offensive game by any stretch, it is a nice pleasant game to pass a few hours, it looks nice, navigating around the menus is handled well, and if you find the cinematics becoming a tad annoying there is an option to turn them off in the options menu too.
Overall: I have enjoyed Screamride, despite lacking the appeal I hoped it would bring, there is enough here to keep you entertained for a few hours at least but I don’t see this being a long term love affair. If you are on the fence there is a demo on the marketplace so you can take it for a test run before you commit your hard earned cash.
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