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A lot of fun

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 19 / 21
Date: August 08, 2003
Author: Amazon User

CRUISE SHIP TYCOON - A BRIEF REVIEW.

Another 'Tycoon' game sets sail - and it's worth checking out.

Cruise Ship Tycoon is all about setting up a luxury cruise ship, keeping guests happy and making enough money to improve your ship.

You must first select a ship. There are different decks on which you build the guest rooms, facilities, food and drinks places and entertainment to keep your guests happy.
Then, when you've made bookings, it's time to set sail!
You have to keep your guests happy by fulfilling their needs, and make a bit of money along the way to improve your cruise ship.
The cruises have a few ports, and when the ship stops at the port, you will have a short period to make more bookings and generally improve the ship. But make sure you don't take too long- the guests can get impatient!

As well as the 'freeform' game, there's also a campaign mode with 10 different missions - the tasks for example may involve getting a certain number a guests within a time limit. These missions are quite varied.
Also, there is a 'Career' mode included.

The graphics are quite impressive: you can zoom in and out freely and rotate as you wish, making it possible to view your ship from just about any angle. Watching the guests go about doing their own thing can be quite good fun, as there is alot of detail included.
The controls are a little awkward, but can be picked up after a short time.

Unfortunately the game comes without a detailed tutorial. However, I have written a tutorial which is available on the dot-com website.

One nice feature of the game is that there is a wide variety of guests- you will get adults as well as children, old guests, fat and thin guests, and they all have their own personalities.
It's interesting to watch them interact with other guests on the cruise.

I really like Cruise Ship Tycoon because it is well themed and puts an interesting slant on the 'tycoon' genre.

Cruises For While But Then Sinks

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 17 / 18
Date: November 28, 2003
Author: Amazon User

Cruise Ship Tycoon is by no means a bad game, but it is a budget game. The creator, Cat Daddy Games, is a small company behind such tycoons as Casino Mogul/Tycoon, Ski Resort Tycoon, Skateboard Tycoon etc. I love games like this, although they can be a bit clumsy and difficult to learn at times.
I've seen many people complaining about how bad the game is because THEY DONT KNOW HOW TO PLAY IT. This game does not come with a manual OR a tutorial - which means you learn as you go. There are 3 modes, one of which is called INSTANT ACTION and is made for experimenting and learning. If you've played any tycoon games before it shouldn't take you too long. You just need to try different things.
The other modes are CHALLENGE and CAREER. Challenge has some fun goal oriented missions in different parts of the world. Basically you are given one boat (small, medium, large or huge) and a route to travel. There are 9 different areas you can cruise in, with 3+ stops along the way.
Not to say the game doesn't have its bugs - at the creator website forums it seems as if these were intentionally put in, but I see them as bugs. For example, your passengers often complain about no areas to rest. So you plop down benches. You plop down rooms. Spas. Turns out you the only way around this is to place rooms, benches, and loungers on every floor. This can be very irritating, especially because in an hour of play you maybe see a guest sit down once. Forget about trying to start out small and on one deck - this bug will make you splash things all over in a haphazard, sloppy manner just to stop the complaints. This severely limits the gameplay, as every time you start a ship you find yourself setting it up in much the same manner as the last because you HAVE to do it a certain way or no one is happy. Your customers also seem to have a real unhealthy urge for alcohol - they want it more than entertainment, food, company, relaxment etc. So be prepared for lushes galore.
The graphics are nice and cheerful, and you can zoom in very close and view whats going on in a sims like manner. There are some nice, detailed restaurants and objects but there just aren't enough of them to keep you happy for too long. Cat Daddy Games has talked about releasing more objects, but its a bit in the future I guess because still nothing on the horizon.
A nice addition is the navigation system - often times there will be obstacles in your way. Some of them are stationary like rocks, but some move around like sea monsters. You have to navigate the boat around them, which means you have to spend some money on fuel and supplies before leaving port or you end up spending a fortune getting pulled into harbour by a little tug boat.
Overall Cruish Ship Tycoon is an interesting sim - but it is nothing compared to the recent explosion of high quality sim/tycoon games (restaurant empire, casino inc, rollercoaster tycoon 2, the sims 2 etc). It could have been made so much better if the gameplay hadn't been so boxed in by the "do it one way or they arent happy" system in the game. It gets repetitve, and ultimatley makes the game sink down like the titanic. But it is great fun for awhile, until the glaring gameplay errors blind you.

Worth the price... and nothing more

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 9 / 9
Date: April 27, 2004
Author: Amazon User

Yet another budget tycoon game. But since this is my favourite genre I went out and bought it.
The game has a nice (though simplistic) interface that would have left a good impression - if I was 8 years old. Besides its interface simplicity, the graphics work out fine as long as you keep in mind that we are talking about a budget tycoon game.
The gameplay starts out as fun: build rooms and facilities for your guests and crew, sail out and watch the little people interact with the facilities and with each other.
But that's where all the fun ends!
There are limited building options and no real issues that need your attention during the cruise. Remember how (since Theme Hospital and Sim Tower) there's an issue that very frequently needs your attention in Tycoon type games? From a traffic jam, to a little persion misbehaving, to an opponent buying somthing you need, to adding more elevators?
Well there are things like that happening, but build a new janitor room, hire 2-3 extra janitors... and that's it! Problem solved! Oh, and don't worry about the costs... I can't seem to find a way to increase my expenses proportionally to my income... My next try will be to replace ALL guest rooms with Health Centers (fully staffed)!
As for the competition, your opponents are nothing more than a single line with the size of their ships and their income. "Linear, simplistic and uninspiring" is actually a compliment for the game's storyboard...

and that's about it!

All in all, if you're a tycoon buff like me and have to own and try ALL the tycoon games out, it's a good bargain.
If you're new into tycoon games, below the age of 12 and desperately want to try something simple, try it.
If you don't belong to the above categories, look around for other tycoon/simulation titles.

PS. I didn't forget the Sound... The developers obviously did.

Crusin Happy!!!!

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 9 / 10
Date: December 15, 2003
Author: Amazon User

This is the first tycoon game I have purchased for me. I have really enjoyed playing. There is alot to watch at one time. The graphics are great. It took a little practice to get the hang of turning the ship. At first I sank many ships. If you detour to far off course you will run out of gas and have to be towed in, this hurts your reputation. All in all I find this game to be fun and additing. Your guest will let you know what they want and it can be a job trying to please them all. I don't play on the computer very much but I have enjoyed this game. It would have gotten 5 stars but it does have a flaw, it stalls in certain situations. For $20.00 it is good entertainment. Buy the game.

To the person who wrote the review below:

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 8 / 9
Date: February 17, 2004
Author: Amazon User

A person reviewing the game below said that one of the bd points was that it took ages to fill decks with rooms.

In fact, there is a shortcut to make building rooms quicker.
If you hold down the shift key, you can build a room multiple times, just like in Zoo Tycoon.

Great Game...A Little Funky Though

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 5 / 5
Date: November 16, 2004
Author: Amazon User

This game is great. I bought it because I have taken 5 cruises and would like to build one. The routes are cool and the game is easy to get a hold of. One problem is that the same music is playing almost the whole game and whe you buy a new ship the old one goes away. I reccomend this game to everybody.

Good and Bad

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 5 / 5
Date: August 17, 2005
Author: Amazon User

When I first got this game in Wal Mart for $9.99, I was really excited about getting to build my own cruise ship. But when I started it up for the first time, I couldn't figure out even how to lower the decks. There is no tutorial so you have to figure out how to play on your own. The guests always find ways to make your cruise ship seem bad. You have to build 1000 rooms to get 1000 people on board your cruise ship. Buy this game if you are interested in a challenge.

If you have been on a cruise before - You'll like this game

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 8 / 16
Date: October 13, 2003
Author: Amazon User

I went for the first time on a cruise a few months ago and since I enjoyed the trip, I felt compelled to purchase the Cruise Ship Tycoon game. It is an easy to learn game that features all the ingredients that make cruising fun. The graphics are amazingly close to what one would expect to find on a real ship and bring back memories of good times.
Overall it is a fun game for anyone that has ever been on a cruise ship and feels like playing Captain themselves.

AWFUL GAME

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 3 / 3
Date: June 10, 2004
Author: Amazon User

This game sounds fun, of course it sounds fun to build a cruise ship,but this is not fun. I was bored with it long before the night was over. One problem is that it can seem like a total waste of time because you have to watch the map and if you run into a disaster, your ship will sink and you have to start all over. You can also not change your route after you have choosen it, you have to just go around in circles.

This does not measure up to roller coaster tycoon or the Sims at all. There is not much to do with it.

Kids simulated fanatic report

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 3 / 3
Date: December 12, 2005
Author: Amazon User

I bought this game and think it is very good. You can zoom in close, you can click on people to see what their status is, and build various ships. You can even decide what stops to make. The only problem is that there is a small variety of things to place in the ship, and if you want casinos and theaters and a mini mall, I would suggest getting Carnival Cruise Lines Tycoon.

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