The Rollercoaster Tycoon series brought in-depth micromanaging gameplay to the extreme using the concept of running a theme park and building rollercoasters of all shapes, sizes and types, making it one of the most popular and copied games around. Rollercoaster Tycoon 3 took this concept and brought it to the first time to 3D, which worked well, but was bogged down by an unintuitive and complicated interface. While the interface hasn't changed, Soaked! is an expansion that brings an amazing amount of content to the game and improves on it in a number of different ways. It even fixes a few bugs that frustrated many players, like how the theme park customers (peeps) would love a ride one moment then suddenly hate it a second later.

Soaked!, as its name suggests, introduces pools and water rides to the existing content. It's amazing how much dimension some water adds to a game! We're not just talking about a few small swimming pools here... we're talking about waterfalls, rafting rides, multi-level pools, high diving boards, and water shows! It's amazing how much content is packed into this expansion! Building the first pool is a joy, since the water looks amazing with reflections and light refractions. Given that this expansion runs on exactly the same hardware as the original title, this is a very impressive feat! Also, the water is interactive. Draw circles in the water and you'll create whirlpools. Draw lines and you'll create waves. Dunk your peeps, create water slides, and watch them splash each other.

The rollercoaster tools remain the same, but if you have enough experience with it to be purchasing the expansion, you're probably used to them by now. It is still somewhat difficult to put a custom track together and decorate it without a lot of excess clicking, accidental deletions, mistakes that lead to more mistakes when you try to fix them, and menus upon menus. Once you get past all the flaws from the original game, you can appreciate everything that the expansion has to offer. What makes things better now is the fact that you can instantly make tunnels by building a track through a land mass, and even have the rollercoaster pass through a waterfall. Building pools, however, isn't nearly as difficult although adding additions like waterslides will utilize the same tool.

Soaked! brings with it the ability to design laser light shows, accented of course with water sprays and sprinklers. This feature is not independent of the fireworks show that was built into the main title, but can work to accent it. Using the same tack-laying tool, you can customize a whole show to include lights, fireworks, and custom music. Like practically every other aspect of the Tycoon game, you can research new effects and include them in your show. Then throw in the fact that you can now choreograph dolphin and killer whale shows alongside these displays, and you have a game that goes way beyond rollercoasters. Perhaps one of our favorite features is the one where you can draw a primitive picture and have it projected onto flat surfaces with lasers.

It's no secret that Rollercoaster Tycoon is a micromanager's dream come true. Players can control just about every aspect of their park's operations, including the price of show tickets, how much food costs, the wages of your employees, and how much (and what quality) cleaning fluid is being used on the pools. To see how you're doing, you click on peeps to see what they're thinking. As stated before, peeps are now a little more consistent about how they regard the different rides. If nothing else, it is a great joy to see them play and interact in the different pools!

The graphics are very well done, and will operate on fairly modest computer systems. There are instances where peeps will meld into different furniture items. Additionally, the bloom effects are overused to the point where you sometimes can't see the game, and is usually best left off. However, these things can be easily disregarded, especially since the majority of your concentration will be spent on managing the park, monitoring income, and constructing large complex rides.

If you enjoyed playing RCT3, or was maybe put off by some of the interface issues, Soaked! offers enough clever and enjoyable content to either continue the enjoyment or pull players back into the groove. Soaked! practically doubles the content of the core game and offers some great looking and wonderful gameplay.