RollerCoaster Tycoon 3 demo... ouch!

Atari and Frontier Development released the demo or RCT3 yesterday, and what a mess it has been. It would appear by reading their forum that fully one-third of the people that tried to run it couldn't do to various errors. Ouch! It appears a lot of it is driver issues. It has been said somewhere that the demo is based on an aging beta. Not sure why you'd put something out there like that.

For me at least, the demo works pretty well, with only a handful of minor graphical glitches. I like the direction Frontier took the game, and it still sticks to Chris Sawyer's gameplay. My only disappointment, or I should say affirmation of my fears, is that the minimum requirements are entirely absurd. Playing the game generally gets me 15-22 fps, which is fine until you go into the "CoasterCam" mode where you get to ride your creations. For that to work well you no doubt need a Doom 3-capable video card.

Few games have ever been as important to me as this franchise, so I hope that the retail release in about a month gets the most thorough QA possible.

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