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> Results: Thrillville: Off the Rails
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The ESRB says:
Mild Lyrics GamerDad heard a typical modern pop music soundtrack, with all the relationship songs that implies Fantasy Violence Several of the mini-games involve shooting the bad guys or robots fighting. Mild Suggestive Themes You're sometimes asked to get a girl and boy together on a date, and there's conversational flirting The original Thrillville was apparently the top-selling original family game of 2006. After playing this sequel for a while, it's not hard to see why, even if I was left wanting something a little more substantial. As the teenaged nephew (or niece) of your inventor Uncle Mortimer, you are tasked with helping him run his wild theme park and figuring out how to stop the evil Globo-Joy Corporation from ruining everyone's fun. He's put you in charge of everything, from designing the rides and placing them in the park to hiring new staff and training them. When you're not deciding on where to run the new ad campaign, you'll be down there in the park itself, running around talking to guests and making sure they're satisfied and testing every attraction to make sure they're up to snuff. You can walk up to any attraction and launch into a variety of mini-games that run the gamut from straight takes on arcade classics to simple first-person shooters. There are a lot of these games (around 50, depending on the console you're playing on) and while none of them would hold up as standalone titles, there are few duds and most of them support multiplayer, turning this into quite a capable party game. Despite the managerial task, don't expect a deep simulation game, as the emphasis is on playing or riding the attractions yourself. Even customizing those attractions isn't a particularly complex experience, as you're just given a few options for each one. You have more freedom when building coasters, and you're now allowed to literally break some rules - you can leave a track as incomplete and the guests will fly off, safely parachuting down, thus the "off the rails" of the title. You don't have as many options as something like the Roller Coaster Tycoon games, however.  The art direction is rather nice, with a cartoony style that suits the game perfectly, but unfortunately the technical execution doesn't do the art department justice, with frequent framerate issues even on the more powerful consoles and a bit too much time spent looking at loading screens for my tastes. The sound is fine, with lots of voicework and a poppy soundtrack that should sit well with any member of the family. My pointing out the lack of depth is merely an observation, not a criticism, although the simplicity does clash with some initial confusion as the game practically throws everything at you at once. The light content and ability to jump into any of the unlocked mini-games makes this a good choice for family game time as long as you can overlook a couple of rough edges. Other versions: The PC, Wii, Xbox 360, and PSP versions are basically the same game as the reviewed PS2 version. It looks the best on the PC and 360, the Wii introduces some motion controls, and the PSP version is scaled down a bit given the portable nature, but they share the same overall theme and presentation. The DS version is a different matter - it's a poor game that should be avoided; unable to deliver on the concepts that make Thrillville fun - only having a handful of minigames, for example. 
This is really a good co-operative family game, as even younger children should be able to handle some of the mini-games, and building roller coasters and choosing the attractions is a fun activity for them to do with a parent or older sibling. It's a good way to introduce problem-solving too - ask your child what they should do if all the park guests are complaining about having nothing to drink, for example. Children will need to be a bit older if they are going to be playing by themselves as they will need more advanced reasoning skills to figure out how to complete the mission objectives, and that's reflected in our "10+" age seal. Content-wise, there are no surprises - at times the player does have to step into the shoes of guests and "chat up" another guest of the opposite sex to start a relationship, but it's all very light and fluffy. The mini-games are not entirely non-violent, but we're talking shooting robots with ray guns or playing "army guys", nothing graphic.
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