"Mall of America Tycoon" Review

Building a mall is a good concept. Developers have tried a few times (think "Mall Tycoon" and the sequel), but have failed. "Mall of America Tycoon" is another disappointment. Save your money and time and avoid this game.

I had low expectations of "Mall of America Tycoon." Unfortunately, it didn't even meet the expectations I did have. If a gamer cannot figure out how to move the camera, the game is going to be an automatic failure. "Mall of America Tycoon" has this problem, among others.

I started out with the "tutorial." It wasn't interactive, just a series of screens with information, that could have been in a manual had there been one. Upon starting the game, I knew basically where things were from the tutorial. But then the problem started. I wanted to zoom out and get an overview look of the mall. I couldn't (if you can, I have no idea how). Maybe this isn't a huge problem, but there are only certain places where you can build stores. I wanted to plan where I was going to put large and small stores. It's impossible to get a feel for the floor of the mall, when you can't get a distant view.

As I tried to live with no zoom, I started placing stores in the designated areas. The customers desire different types of stores depending on their age, sex, and wealth. The customers walked around, browsing the stores, and appearing to rarely by anything. Information about individuals was limited.

The game claims to have a lot of variety of stores, but it doesn't. You are limited to putting in a certain kind of store at a time. From a list of five or so, they same ones kept showing up.

Poor graphics and camera controls, will keep you from enjoying what little the game has to offer. Skip this tycoon.