Jesus effing christ! Get rollercoaster tycoon 3! Soooo goooood! I recreated a theme park from where I grew up and had more fun riding the virtual rides than the real ones.
The problem with RCT3 is that they don't let you start a theme park from scratch. I bought this game with all the expansions on Steam... Loaded it up, and they only let you play with pre-set parks. OR you can do one from scratch, but with unlimited money.
Jesus effing christ! Get rollercoaster tycoon 3! Soooo goooood! I recreated a theme park from where I grew up and had more fun riding the virtual rides than the real ones.
The problem with RCT3 is that they don't let you start a theme park from scratch. I bought this game with all the expansions on Steam... Loaded it up, and they only let you play with pre-set parks. OR you can do one from scratch, but with unlimited money.
How would that ever be fun?
Exact same thing happened to me. The lack of building from scratch with limited resources pretty much killed the game for me. I played a ton of the "missions" but after a while they just weren't enough for me.
Also I hated how the game took ages to load when you had all expansions installed, I mean like 3 or 4 minutes. I went to the official forums and I was told that it was normal. Sheesh.
It's not structures-centric, but Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts (360) is all about building your own weird-ass vehicles to get challenges done. There are bad guys in some of the challenges, but you've got weapons available to you as well. And I may be the only one, but I get a lot of pleasure out of editing preset vehicles on the fly (some of the challenges have a "and thou shalt use this crappy car" restriction, but you can enter edit mode and take stuff off or move it around).
And it does have a test garage where you can just drive your creations around if you're not in the mood to try at challenges.
I used to have a lot of fun building civs in the AOE/Rise of Nations series, set to "Conquest" with no AI opponents. RON was especially fun for me because I could watch my civ go from the Stone Age all the way to the present - or focus on any time period in between that I wanted.
If you can find it, I'll throw in another vote for Tropico.
Who doesn't want to be a despot ruler of their own tiny Caribbean island micro-nation?
The Mucho Macho edition of Tropico was released as one of those $10 two-packs with, IIRC, Stronghold. So it's actually pretty easy to find for cheap. On PC. On Mac? Fuck, be prepared to trade a kidney for it.
Also, I highly recommend Railroad Tycoon 3. Avoid Railroads.
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The problem with RCT3 is that they don't let you start a theme park from scratch. I bought this game with all the expansions on Steam... Loaded it up, and they only let you play with pre-set parks. OR you can do one from scratch, but with unlimited money.
How would that ever be fun?
Tropico + a number of the games in this thread can be found on GameTap.
Yeah that's more of a "creation" game than a "building" game
PSN ID : DetectiveOlivaw | TWITTER | STEAM ID | NEVER FORGET
Exact same thing happened to me. The lack of building from scratch with limited resources pretty much killed the game for me. I played a ton of the "missions" but after a while they just weren't enough for me.
Also I hated how the game took ages to load when you had all expansions installed, I mean like 3 or 4 minutes. I went to the official forums and I was told that it was normal. Sheesh.
You require additional pylons.
Rock Band DLC | GW:OttW - arrcd | WLD - Thortar
And it does have a test garage where you can just drive your creations around if you're not in the mood to try at challenges.
EDIT: Also SimTower.
The Mucho Macho edition of Tropico was released as one of those $10 two-packs with, IIRC, Stronghold. So it's actually pretty easy to find for cheap. On PC. On Mac? Fuck, be prepared to trade a kidney for it.
Also, I highly recommend Railroad Tycoon 3. Avoid Railroads.