As a seasoned park-goer and theme park enthusiast, I must confess that I was eagerly anticipating the release of Planet Coaster 2. However, my hopes were dashed as I found myself navigating through an intricate labyrinth of clicks and menus that left me feeling more frustrated than entertained.
Reflecting on Frontier Developments and the assortment of management games they’ve introduced over time – from zoos to dinosaur parks and Formula 1 – it’s astounding to consider that this diversity originated from just one franchise: Planet Coaster. A spiritual successor to the Rollercoaster Tycoon series (with Frontier developing the third installment), Planet Coaster became a viable replacement after Atari significantly altered the original. While it had its flaws, it offered players a platform to fulfill their theme park construction dreams, fueled by a dedicated community that shared intricate creations.
Despite other game releases, it’s surprising that we had to wait so long for the sequel of Planet Coaster 2. With enhanced graphics, a new Career Mode featuring diverse situations, innovative elements like water park attractions and flumes, and numerous improvements on what made the first one exceptional, it appears to be expanding upon its predecessor’s success. However, due to persistent bugs, unclear user interface, underwhelming themes, and other issues, it’s challenging to endorse it at this point in time.
In addition to issues within the storyline, Career Mode (alongside Sandbox Mode) encounters a substantial problem with the user interface in Planet Coaster 2.
In “Planet Coaster 2”, you begin your journey with fundamental gameplay modes such as Career, Sandbox, and Franchise (which allows multiplayer interactions with other gamers). The Career mode challenges you to explore diverse locations worldwide and engage in a variety of situations. Initially, it introduces the essentials of park management and presents exciting water rides, before moving on to complex missions like reviving four broken roller coasters. Furthermore, you have the option to linger in certain scenarios and accomplish extra objectives, thereby gaining proficiency in other aspects such as acquiring land, constructing flat rides, paths, and more from the ground up.
The issue lies with the game characters and their dialogue. Despite this, Planet Coaster 2 continues to force these characters upon players, making them as annoying as they can be. Although I’m sure someone found the exchange between the Newton brothers about a panicking guest in a pool, where Eugene loses his cool while his brother has to calm him down amusing, it stretches out too much and disrupts the flow of the gameplay. Even if you enjoy these characters, this scene goes on for too long.
The constant stream of jokes and sarcasm also begins to wear after a point, but the worst part is if you’re a new player, there’s no way to skip to the next dialogue. You can only skip the entire interaction, leading to some awkwardness when you suddenly have to build a power distributor and connect it to the power grid while wondering why there’s a heat map suddenly brought up. At least the voice actors try their best to inject some enthusiasm into the proceedings, saddled as they are with this “material.”
As a passionate gamer diving into Planet Coaster 2, I’ve found a persistent issue that dampens my experience – the User Interface (UI). Even though I play on PC, I’ve heard fellow gamers express their frustrations about its unintuitive design and console-like feel. Sadly, this issue doesn’t spare us PS5 users either. Navigating around the park with the camera isn’t a big deal, but when it comes to finer adjustments like zooming in, rotating, or delving deeper into the park management, the challenges start piling up.
Let’s not delve into the flumes themselves. It can be frustrating to maintain the perfect blend of thrill and comfort, keeping fear and queasiness at bay, only for some visitors to suddenly cease using them.
When selecting a building, you must navigate to “Edit Building” to make changes. This is fine on its own but becomes all the more tedious when dealing with flumes. Several additional menus must be navigated for aspects like testing (with three separate buttons for closing, testing and opening a ride), selecting different components, assigning staff, and whatnot. All those clicks for one aspect of one part of the theme park get tiring.
Navigating menus isn’t always a breeze, especially when choosing facilities. You need to switch between tabs with R1 and L1, sift through various icons for the one you want, scroll through those options, and finally confirm your selection. Additionally, custom creations and pool extras are hidden in separate menus, adding to the complexity. Considering community creations from the workshop will only complicate matters further. The constant navigation and selection can be draining at best, and at worst, it becomes an unpleasant and demotivating experience.
Regarding the design of water attractions, there is plenty of room for improvement. Pools, in their basic form, may not be very engaging, and features like ladders seem unnecessary because guests tend to exit without using them. Constructing a pool that aligns with your vision can be challenging. You might consider marking out points and trying to create curves, or selecting different shapes that ultimately appear unnatural, but they simply don’t feel user-friendly enough. Good luck with the project!
Don’t even get me started on the flumes themselves. Meticulously balancing the lateral and vertical Gs with the right amount of excitement, ensuring the fear and nausea are at a minimum, is irritating when guests mysteriously stop riding on them. Frontier is at least looking into the physics, seemingly implementing scenarios where guests can fall off of slides, but there’s no ETA. There are several features yet to be implemented, from billboards and custom music to having several guests on a flume at a time and changing the weather in Sandbox Mode.
Here’s hoping for some adjustments to pathing as well. Placing a staff building and mechanic workshop side by side, and getting the option to create a merged path, only for it to not work multiple times in a row is frustrating. I also found the results somewhat perplexing – after receiving reports of guests being thirsty and navigating to the drink stand, I found no problems. This is on top of other bugs like character models clipping, shaky buildings when attempting to snap them near a specific path, etc.
Currently, it appears more aesthetically pleasing compared to the original, yet it seems to lack the intuitive design, creativity, and that perfect finishing touch needed for it to truly stand out.
It’s particularly disheartening that amidst various design options, absent features, and technical glitches, there exists a truly enjoyable experience within Planet Coaster 2. Despite the game’s difficulty not aiming to challenge or strain you, constructing the perfect park with scenic elements, creating intricate rollercoasters, debugging them – dealing with the initial failures before getting it right, and simply watching your staff at work can be quite entertaining.
Even though it operates at just 30 frames per second on PS5, the graphics have never looked better – from the detailed textures and complexities of various roller coasters, to the lifelike movements of guests and their animations, as well as the immersive environments. The music is enjoyable with its soothing melodies, while the sound effects are spot-on. There’s a delightful snap when placing a diving board or hearing an amused exclamation from a staff manager upon positioning them correctly in specific spots.
The proposed title “Planet Coaster 2” presents intriguing concepts, but currently, it seems like an early, unpolished iteration of the original game – more visually appealing, yet lacking in user-friendliness, creativity, or that perfect sheen to truly captivate. With ongoing improvements and updates, I envision Frontier transforming this into a much richer experience; however, at present, it’s not as engrossing or enchanting as the original when it initially debuted.
This game was reviewed on the PlayStation 5.
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2024-11-13 18:42