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It’s been 8 years since Planet Coaster launched and now it’s back for a second helping with Planet Coaster 2! Is there enough to fill your interest and excitement meters? Or are you left wanting to get off the ride?
Imagination Amplified
Theme parks have been intrinsically tied to me since the very first time I visited Walt Disney World. When I think of my childhood and the games I played for countless hours on end, I think of Theme Park World. I spent days constructing my ultimate theme park and adored every single minute. Whilst my passion for theme parks has never dimmed, the choice of quality games in this space has been far too few. However, that has changed in recent memory with the releases of both the original Planet Coaster and the superb Park Beyond. These two games managed to capture the pure joy of building coasters and parks whilst balancing it with the perils of managing a business. Now, Frontier Developments are back with a sequel and boy, have they delivered! Planet Coaster 2 is both a celebration and an evolution of the original title. Like the previous game, the content is split into three main modes: career, sandbox and franchise.
Career mode is once again an absolute blast. Structured across five chapters, including the prologue, the career mode takes you on a journey to becoming the ultimate theme park mastermind. The prologue is once again a superb introduction for both newcomers and veterans of simulation games. Like Planet Zoo and the original Planet Coaster, Frontier have become for me the industry standard for how to create tutorials that are both engaging and informative. From here, the game takes you across different biomes and different theme parks, whilst tasking you with some truly unique conundrums to solve. Each sub mission in the chapter feels varied and kept me engaged through the whole journey, with the final chapter a true test of everything I had learnt along the way. Also, with the introduction of water parks in this game, there is so much more to achieve. It’s not for the faint hearted though; you can earn bronze, silver, gold and platinum medals for completing specific tasks on each level and some of these can be incredibly difficult to achieve.
Like theme park construction in real life, these medals require patience and dedication to earn and I truly felt rewarded upon earning them. Coupled with these wonderful missions, is a superb and diverse cast of characters. They lead you on your way to theme park supremacy and like previous Frontier games, these characters made me laugh, yet always made sure I was fully informed on the current issue. A wonderful and deep career mode that I cannot wait to go back and earn every medal in!
Sandbox is once again a superb way of allowing your creative juices to flow. Pick a biome, tinker with parameters and sliders to create ultimate freedom or ultimate challenge; the choice is completely yours. I can already tell you I will be spending countless more hours tinkering and creating my ultimate theme park.
The final mode on offer is the franchise mode. Acting as the games online mode, franchise allows you to create parks and publish them to friends and leader boards which adds incentives to become the best at making these wonderful parks. The added ability to view friends’ and others’ parks in a first person FOV, is superb and really made me feel as if I was walking through these parks myself. But the biggest addition is the ability to build and manage a park with a friend, as now you can share your save for another to work on whilst you are away. This is a great addition although it does make me want to be able to play with a friend and build cooperatively at the same time. Fingers crossed for the third title. This is the pinnacle of theme park simulation and that is even more evident in gameplay.
Creating and designing has never been as easy as it is in Planet Coaster 2. If you have played the first title or Planet Zoo, gameplay follows that same structure with its brilliant UI. Each section of the tool bar is clearly labelled and easy for you to access, whether it’s looking for a flat ride, coaster or shops and amenities – building a theme park has never been easier. Controls are responsive and inputs are slick, making finding what you desire so simple and easy. Creating rollercoasters is detailed and so finitely accurate, allowing you to create the ultimate thrill ride. The addition of water rides and pools to this game only expands your creativity, as you can morph terrain to your will and create out of this world slides and pools for hours on end. The level of detail in the creative tools is something to behold, as you can change virtually anything you want in terms of presentation of the ride with a vast amount of colour tools, scenery tools and even music options for each ride. The return of the excellent Frontier workshop allows you to upload and download other users’ creations which is such a great tool to gain ideas and inspiration. This truly is a dream for theme park enthusiasts like myself as the sheer amount of rides and coasters is superb.
New additions to the formula help create new replay ability and allow the player to tinker to a whole new level. Updated systems such as guest preferences are now so detailed it’s impossible for you to not know your guests’ desires, with even how much sunburn they are accumulating now a metric. Like Disney and Universal Studios, you can now sell priority tickets to customers and add lanes to rides to gain extra money, along with pool passes and flume ride tickets. Charge too much and you’ll hear the dissatisfaction of the guests as the response system for the guests is fantastic and realistic. Staff management has also been streamlined from the first game, allowing you to choose three pre set pay levels for wages instead of having to adjust each colleague like the first game. This is a welcome change.
This is the most in-depth, immersive theme park sim yet with how fluid and easy gameplay feels, but it’s not without some minor flaws. For example, the ride break down system appears to be flawed at this moment, with rides constantly breaking down for no apparent reason. This is frustrating trying to run a massive park and takes away from the overall enjoyment. Also inexplicably excluded from this game is the archetype theme system from the first game, such as pirate, alien or western themes that allowed you to morph a park to a specific setting. There are still options like Viking, aquatic and tropical but these feel watered down compared to the original. These are minor issues though as gameplay is still a wonderfully immersive and innovative experience.
The Wonders Of Architecture
Like the original title, this game looks superb as you hover over your theme park. Rides look daunting and vibrant with the colours of the track striking the eye from any distance. Water effects look superb and rightly so; so much emphasis is on the addition of water parks it’s important they don’t look out of place. Lighting is once again near flawless as the sun beams down on rides or sets after a hectic day. I could sit and watch that all day long. Everything you can create and select looks and feels authentic and this is only heightened in franchise mode visiting other parks. Wandering through the entrance in first person truly captured that feeling of wonder and excitement I get when I arrive at a theme park. Performance is also vastly improved from the original and stayed mostly at a brilliant 60fps during my time playing, even during times I was creating ridiculously long coasters and flumes. A wonderful effort in visual presentation; you truly feel like the king looking down at their creations.
Similarly, sound design and soundtrack are stellar. Placing each individual item has a distinct sound attached to it, such as when each type of path is being laid. Hearing the guests scream on the rides whilst the coaster roars along the steel or wooden track is truly something to behold. As mentioned before, the voice cast is excellent and really helps to inform and encourage you to tap into your creative side. The music of Planet Coaster 2 is one of my favourite aspects of the whole game. It sounds and feels so serene and calming. I could sit and listen to this soundtrack all day long and it really compliments the simulation gameplay as it softly plays in the background. It’s soothing and comforting and just makes me smile when I think of it. It never outstays its welcome but is never too far from the mind and that is how a soundtrack should play in a game like this. Wonderful.
Verdict
Planet Coaster 2 is the pinnacle of theme park simulation. The sheer amount of control on offer is astounding with a brilliant UI and responsive controls, making you feel like the true architect of the park. Creating rollercoasters has never been as detailed and the addition of water parks only adds to the vast content available. The three core modes create lasting replay ability and strong visual and audio presentation help propel this game to new heights. It takes everything wonderful about the original title and expands on it, to superb results. I adore every aspect of theme parks and I truly feel like this game was designed for me. Now I’m to ride the rollercoasters!
