Review of Prison Tycoon 4 Supermax

I'm not sure why I keep going back to this game. I feel like I keep going back to a girlfriend I dumped, only to realize in the first 5 minutes WHY I dumped her in the first place.
This game is SO terrible.

There is NO manual, or tutorial.
When you mouse-over something it never gives you a pop-up window for info.
You just have to guess what all the buttons and icons mean.
The Idea is great. I was hoping that (this being the 4th in the series) that it would be the latest and greatest.
NOPE.
The guards look like prisoners. Too much like the prisoners. There is no easy way of finding them. In all the other TYCOON games you can turn on/off
layers of things (ie. trees, buildings, guests, etc). Clicking on a character only works once in about 8 clicks. Normally, you end up selecting the building they are standing near.

When a guy is mad, they never tell you why. In all the other TYCOON games they have thought bubbles (ie. "tiger is sad, and wants a mate.", "Joe is upset there are no fast rides", "betty feels the park is dirty", etc)

You have to assign guards a path to walk, or they will sit on the bleachers with the Cons all day. In Roller Coaster Tycoon, you can assign workers AREAS to maintain. The guards will also do nothing unless you click them, and tell them to beat a prisoner. I have three guards, and a councilor sitting on the bleachers, right now, watching an inmate get killed less then three feet away.
Oh.. that reminds me... you can not remove the dead. I'm not sure how to, anyway. I have dead bodies laying all around my prison. The guards have no "remove corpse" Icon, and neither do the janitors.
The dogs seem to be the only proactive guards in the prison. They walk around, attack fighting prisoners, and take care of themselves.
good boy.
When you find there are more prisoners then beds, you have to open the prisoners list, and click each of 50+ prisoners names, to find which one has no Bed Icon that pops up on one of the Housing Dorms. That is the only way to find out who is bed-less.
My Prisoners dug a hole. The alarm goes off. Its very loud. And they tell me to fill in the hole. After searching forever, i find it. It is UNDER another object. One of the buildings has these pillars that stick out in front, and the hole was on the same location as the pillar. I click a guard (about 9 times), then run the cursor over the hole, and click..... AHHH! It clicked the prisoner escaping, and selected HIM. I have to go and try an click the guard again. Then ... wait for the prisoner to escape... then click the hole... DAMN! I clicked the pillar, and I get the building edit screen... grrrrr..... Get the Guard selected again, and try to click the hole.... WORKED. He runs over to the hole... then STOPS. IT's time for his coffee break, so he turns around and walks toward the bunk-house! You would think stopping prisoners from escaping would over-ride his break time....
They must be UNION Guards.
....... to fill that damn hole took about 15 minutes of clicking, and re-clicking.

I love all the other Tycoon Games, and I keep going back to this one hoping I just missed something that will make everything make sense... but it never does.

This game sucks.





Click Here to see more reviews about: Prison Tycoon 4 Supermax