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| | Genre: Simulation | | Min OS X: 10.5  CPU: Intel @ 1800 MHz RAM: 512 MB Hard Disk: 1500 MB DVD-ROM Graphics: 800x600 @ 32-bit, 128 MB VRAM |
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Other enhancements Beyond the major features of the expansions, there are a few minor but pleasing tweaks that add useful small enhancements to the original game.There are a few extra music tracks, and you can now get the game menu to cycle between tracks. And when loading games, there's now a more informative progress indicator than before. However, it's the graphics options that have expanded most. There's now more control over shadows, a few alternative settings for day/night transitions, on-screen bloom effects, the ability to show trees beyond the edges of the defined map area, and a lot of new refinements for water effects. Water can now be reflective, and if that option is enabled, you can set the range of objects that should be reflected, according to the capabilities of your system (terrain, scenery, people, animals and particle effects). If you use simple, non-reflective water, you still have the option to add bump-mapping to it. There are new water-refraction options too, including a fun option to add water droplets to the in-game camera, which means that if you take your view underwater, rivulets of moisture run down your screen for a few seconds after you emerge. Sounds great; and I'm sure it is, if it works properly with your graphics card. Unfortunately, almost none of the new graphics effects that I've just described did work with the standard-issue GeForce 8800 GT installed in my 2008-vintage Mac Pro. Even the anti-aliasing options didn't appear to do anything. That all came as quite a disappointment, because good water effects in particular can add a lot to the appearance of a game. The reflection options did little more than to make water glow weirdly, as though it were radioactive, especially during the game's night cycle. Even the supposedly simple option of bump-mapping non-reflective water only had the effect of making the water appear to almost vanish. Refraction was the one new feature that did work for me, although the sub-option of adding wet rivulets to the camera when emerging from water didn't work properly (the rivulets appeared, and looked convincing in shape, but were completely solid and appeared in strange colours). As for the new bloom effect, that merely added a distracting ghost over one quarter of the screen area. I'll have to take it on trust that these effects do in fact work with some graphics cards, even though the one in my machine didn't want to co-operate. On the positive side, the water graphics did look pretty good even without all the optional extras. The most pleasing improvement, in a sense, is that one of the big gripes of my earlier review has been addressed: mouse scrolling now works in dialogue windows with lists in them. That might not sound particularly important, but it's actually quite a big deal, not least because the additional features of the two expansion packs makes many of those scrolling lists quite a lot longer than they were before. Given that a lot of the scrolling lists are pokey little boxes in windows that can't be resized (regardless of the screen resolution you're using), being able to skim through them quickly and easily with mouse-scrolling is an important benefit. I'd also like to say that the other big grumble of my earlier review had been addressed: namely that the bug-ridden CoasterCam had been fixed. Unfortunately, I can't. The problems with CoasterCam appear to have been improved without going so far as to put them all right. Especially in rides other than coasters, peeps seem very keen to vanish into the insides of seats when they sit down, perhaps allowing just the odd limb to protrude beyond the boundaries of the cushions. Maybe they're chicken, and this is one step better than just closing their eyes. However, I didn't see the old problems of flickering textures or monstrous, gargantuan heads appearing all over the place, so the graphical glitches seem less pronounced than before. The main problem now seems to be limited to misalignment between peeps and their seats, and that's of little real importance. Besides, CoasterCam is supposed to be about letting you ride the rides yourself, and for doing that it works very well in most cases.
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