Below are user reviews of Mall of America Tycoon and on the right are links to professionally written reviews.
The summary of review scores shows the distribution of scores given by the professional reviewers for Mall of America Tycoon.
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User Reviews (1 - 11 of 14)
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Quite Disappointed
1
Rating: 1,
Useful: 35 / 37
Date: October 23, 2004
Author: Amazon User
No manual included. No manual on CD either. There's not a variety of merchants (stores) available to "build" your mall, or if there is I don't know how to get a variety. Even after building a few stores, the same merchants kept appearing so you end up putting 4 music stores on the same section/floor of the mall. That doesn't make sense. You also cannot rotate the screen to see all angles of the mall, or at least I haven't figured out how to if you could because there was no manual. The CD insert shows how to install the game manually, has an overview of the game and a small paragraph about gameplay and a few shortcuts how to get around the mall. That's not enough explanation of the game. The tutorial also does not help. Very disappointed.
Don't waste your money!
1
Rating: 1,
Useful: 49 / 51
Date: November 09, 2004
Author: Amazon User
If you're looking for a game that has bad graphics, nasty controls and is no fun then this is your game.
I play both 1st person shooters and building/strategy games and I must say this is one of the worst Tycoon games I've ever played. Here are the games' Pros and Cons:
Pros
It's only $20
Cons
It's $20 you can put towards a game that is fun.
The shoppers in the game wonder aimlessly around the various stores, never leave with packages and are BORING. There are no families, no couples, none of the individualistic small touches that are associated with the fun games. They have no personality at all.
The store graphics, as well as the people, are awful. You can't tell one store from another, they have as much inviduality as the people and that's pretty bad. The People and decorations have no animation. Yes, they move, but you can't tell what they doing. I should mention here that I can play both Doom 3 and Far Cry and they look great on my PC. So it's this dismal game not my machine.
The controls or lack of are abysmal. There is no zoom you just have to move the mouse around until you find an angle you can live with.
In conclusion, I wish I had waited until the reviews came out as I can't imagine anyone rating this game highly, it's not even mediocre. I wasted $20 I could have put towards Zoo Tycoon 2, RollerCoaster Tycoon 3 or Children of the Nile. If you expect any fun from a game, stay clear of Mall of America Tycoon.
I wish I had read reviews
1
Rating: 1,
Useful: 19 / 23
Date: January 04, 2005
Author: Amazon User
Ok so I saw this game and went nuts for it in the store and had to have it.
You see, I lived less than two miles from the MOA for a while and I thought it would be a lot of fun to play this game. While is it kinda fun to play, the game does do some serious sucking.
Seems like all the people do is walk around.
You can't tell the stores apart from each other
You can't assign staff to a patrol area
The atmosphere selections are horrible, you get two benches, two fountains and two kinds of street lights.
Trying to center a store on the space you want to put it on is horrible.
There is not a lot of selection for stores and the store selection changes. For example, you may be looking for a small store and all you can find are large stores and you have no room for a large store.
Camera can not show the entire section you're working on
Camera is hard to control
tutorial isn't complete
the english is BAD. It's not just bad grammar, it's english as a second language bad.
You can't do anything with camp snoopy and you don't get any money for it but you still need to pay for upkeep!
The stores are not brands you know or are even in the MOA
There are grocery stores in this game and there are not grocery stores in the MOA!
The outside of the box makes this game look GREAT! However, once I got it home I was terribly dissapointed. The only thing this game really has going for it is the authenticity of the mall itself.
However, I like to accomplish something when I'm playing games and I own games like "The Sims", up to unleashed, Sim City 2000 and "Sim Theme Park" and I love playing them ,so I'm playing this, it's not as great as I thought it was but hey, it was 20 bucks.
The Worst Game Ever, buy a deceased hampster instead!
1
Rating: 1,
Useful: 15 / 16
Date: March 07, 2005
Author: Amazon User
Where should I start? Well lets say this. If you are seeking fun then take the $20 bucks this game costs and buy a dead hampster, becuase a dead hampster is much more fun to play with then this game.
I bought this game at Target for $20, which was, what I thought, a good deal. I have played Roller Coaster Tycoons 1-3 and love them all. After beating those I needed more Tycoon. So I saw MoA and thought "cool I can build my own mall."
I installed the game and fired it up for the first time. Within 2 nano seconds I knew I hated it. The camera controls are as horrible as the company who made this game. I should have known that this game was teh suk when I saw Activision made it. Once you get over not being able to see your mall from a distance you then have to figure out how to build stores. This was no easy task, the floors are multi-colored supposedly symbolizing where you can and cannot build, this sucks. All i could do was build the same 3 Kiosks over and over and place cheesy benches to help the "customers REST." I then proceed to get messages over and over telling me that the "atmosphere and store selection" was not good enough for the lifeless customers that wander around aimlessly and buy nothing.
10 Minutes after installing it was un-installed and put back in the box to be returned tommorrow.
Over all this is the worst game ever made and should not be sold becuase it is a waste of money and is a rip off to trust worthy consumers who keep video game companies in business. I think that all people who bought this game and cannot return it should be refunded all their money plus compensation for aggrivation of having to jump through flaming hoops to install/un-install this worthless game.
Worst Game Ever!!!!
1
Rating: 1,
Useful: 15 / 16
Date: March 14, 2005
Author: Amazon User
This has got to be the worst game I have ever played in my life. It is absolutely awful. The camera controls on this game are horrible. There are little to no store selections, it makes no sense, the customers are soooo boring and don't buy or do anything that is meaningful. It looks all good and glossy on the cover but trust me, it is pure crap. I cannot beleive this game even costs $20. This has got to be the worst game I have ever played in my whole life!
Pros-Good Idea
Cons-Choppy Gameplay, bad camera controls, pointless customers, no instructions, cheap design, looks good on the cover, not worth the money, limited store selection.
I wish I could give this zero stars
1
Rating: 1,
Useful: 13 / 15
Date: March 23, 2005
Author: Amazon User
I made the mistake of buying this for my 9 year old daughter who LOVES Zoo Tycoon, thinking it would be similar. Someone must have sold (or stolen) the Tycoon trademark, because MOA is difficult to use -- it is not intuitive, and I cannot figure out how to fix mistakes (so there are trash cans all over the place and the stores won't land anywhere....).
Didn't even work
1
Rating: 1,
Useful: 6 / 12
Date: May 25, 2005
Author: Amazon User
This game didn't even work out of the box.
I'm glad, because I don't have to put up with what everyone else had.
I guess I had a little fun trying to make this work, but no use.
If only there were aa zero star rating...
1
Rating: 1,
Useful: 6 / 7
Date: December 16, 2005
Author: Amazon User
I have to agree with everyone else. This game was horrible. I actually bought it used and I thought it was a great deal at only 15 bucks. To bad I hadn't come online first to find out new its just about 20 bucks. That should have clued me in from the start. Avoid this game and save up for something thats worth it.
horrible!
1
Rating: 1,
Useful: 6 / 7
Date: December 18, 2005
Author: Amazon User
I got this game at officemax for only $10 and got it home expecting something great but when i started to play it i had to spend 15 minutes trying to figure out how to play then finaly i figured it out and then it took soo long to get all the attractions up and then get them into place that i finally just quit for a little while. I just play it now when im bored and have lots of time to do nothing!
Poorly written
1
Rating: 1,
Useful: 6 / 7
Date: December 27, 2005
Author: Amazon User
I agree with most of what the other reviewers of this product have said. I did figure out how to move the camera around and zoom out, although it is cumbersome. My first clue that this game would be a disaster was reading all of the grammatical and spelling errors in the tutorial. It sounded like the person that wrote the tutorial had translated it directly from their native language (NOT English).
I had some fun with the game, trying to do well enough to unlock the next part of the mall. But eventually I tired of creating the same stores over and over. The program eventually started putting things in odd places and not fully deleting the stores that closed down. I ended up with red-colored stores all over the screen that couldn't be replaced.
Save your money!
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