We’re a family big on theme parks in the Collyer household, and the original Planet Coaster proved a good fit for the gaps between our trips. So we anticipated this sequel and its additions of water parks greatly – and thankfully, things seem to have paid off. Planet Coaster 2 offers some seriously deep gameplay and park building action.
Players of the original – or indeed any park building sim – will be right at home here. We have a career/tutorial to make our way through, where we learn the ropes and try to complete pre-built park bases by following objectives, as well as the free build mode where we can let loose and create all sorts of monstrosities.
The career mode sets us up nicely, easing us in with some simple tasks – build one flat ride, place a shop, hire a janitor – but once the basic tests are done it offers up some more challenging tasks to complete (or we can simply move on to the next level).
I found the learning curve a bit of a mixed bag as I moved on though. We generally only have one objective at a time, but sometimes these are not as clear as they could be. One required me to start an advertising campaign, but before I could do that I had to fulfill certain requirements. The way this was worded led me to believe I had completed the task, but I couldn’t then start the ad campaign. Because the park still needed running in addition to trying to complete this objective, I was constantly being pulled in several directions and it took me a long time to realise my mistake (I needed 3 lots of 3 separate shops, not one of each).
There were other instances too where a task or pop up wasn’t solved despite my best effort. The UI is, as you’d imagine, packed with drop down and nested menus that often go layers deep, and trying to navigate it all on a gamepad has proven tricky indeed. Hitting a notification item on the left of the screen may show us where the issue is, but we can’t easily click off the notification itself, and far too many times I ended up pressing the wrong button or doing something not intended. It didn’t help that the interface on Xbox feels very sluggish, with button presses not always responding, and sometimes not even going where we’d expected. Navigating the blueprints menu can be a frustrating experience.
However, when we can get our head round these issues, there’s no denying Planet Coaster 2 is a supremely deep and satisfying park builder. Even something as simple as placing a pathway comes with so much depth in terms of style, height, width, and more, and when it comes to the actual coasters well; as long as physics allow, we can pretty much create anything we can think of.
Parts need researching, and again the UI issues come into play by simply cluttering the screen as we attempt to lay tracks out, but there are so many options to choose from. We can design a ride down to the smallest detail of the surrounding scenery or setting interactive animations at points on a track and it’s all overwhelmingly brilliant. As someone who has been fortunate enough to see the incredible real life Floridian theme parks many times, my mind races at creating something that would feel at home at Universal Studios.
Or indeed Volcano Bay thanks to the headline addition of water attractions. Similar granular detail is available here, with all manner of flumes, lazy rivers, pools, and rides there to be built. As with the parks as a whole, we need to make sure everything is looked after – power, safety, fin factor – but also add in things like water pumps and filters, life guards, wave machines and changing rooms. It adds a whole new dynamic to the park building structure, and is something we’ll no doubt be coming back to for a long time in search of the ultimate water theme park.
Conclusion
Park builders have come a long way in recent years, and Planet Coaster 2 tops the bunch for us as a game packed with possibilities. The menu system suffers on a gamepad for sure, and we found it quite laggy too, but if you can persevere and get round the shortcomings of this, then the parks of your dreams are just a few thousand button presses away.
This game was reviewed based on Xbox S|X review code, using an Xbox S|X console. All of the opinions and insights here are subject to that version. Game provided by publisher.
