Planet Coaster 2 overview – buckled potential

I bloody love a theme park: the sights, the smells, the gleeful screams, the sense of utter transportation. However most of all, I really like the breathless conflict of science and artwork behind these totally encompassing illusions. I’m the form of theme park nerd who nonetheless will get genuinely giddy after they see know-how and creativity crash collectively like this, and who’s been daydreaming their excellent rides and coasters into existence since a run-in with Disney’s Haunted Mansion on the age of three grew to become a little bit of an obsession. For individuals like me, the unique Planet Coaster was a dream. For all its flaws, it was a brilliantly carried out, fantastically introduced suite of artistic instruments able to turning theme park flights of fancy into digital actuality, and its sequel guarantees the identical, however extra.

Like its predecessor, Planet Coaster 2 is a direct head turner; an excellent fusion of artwork, animation, sound, and music that brings these artistic whims to splendidly convincing life – a world of whirling steel, blinking lights, and the delighted screams of friends, to be skilled on excessive or at floor degree. Strip away the presentational pizzazz, after all, and Planet Coaster 2 stays indebted to Chris Sawyer’s seminal RollerCoaster Tycoon, barely straying from the template established over 1 / 4 of a century in the past. It is a recreation constructed across the intricacies of park administration; of hiring employees, establishing rides, and offering key facilities – all to please friends and make sufficient revenue that the operational loop can proceed indefinitely. However as soon as once more, Planet Coaster 2’s actual strengths lie within the depth, breadth, and suppleness of its design and customisation instruments.

It is a sequel of light evolution slightly than sweeping reinvention, which is not to say its refinements aren’t instantly obvious – Frontier has clearly listened to suggestions from Planet Coaster 1, even when it appears like its most notable enhancements are particularly catered towards the YouTube content material creator contingent with days to spend fashioning their marvels of intricate design. Its new lighting engine, for example, is not simply fairly, it is sensible; enclosed areas are literally darkish, which means correct darkish rides are lastly attainable with out clunky workarounds.

Then there’s the optimisation. In contrast to its notoriously spluttery predecessor, Planet Coaster 2 is much extra able to maintaining with Gamers’ artistic whims with out instantly turning right into a slideshow. Monitor trip building usually feels much less fiddly; flat rides can now be stripped again and totally themed with décor items – invaluable for these wanting a extra cohesive aesthetic circulation throughout their parks – whereas seemingly minor additions resembling object-scaling and surroundings brushes are main recreation changers. Elsewhere, swimming pools and flumes have been launched, satisfying the infinite clamour for water parks among the many neighborhood.

Planet Coaster 2’s numerous play modes are extra clearly outlined now, too. There is a marketing campaign mode, for example, that goes to some entertainingly bizarre locations because it cheerfully turns the basics of park constructing into objective-based challenges. That mentioned, its tendency to prioritise dad-tier jokes over useful explanations – and the frequency with which any makes an attempt at creativity butt up towards arbitrary limitations – make it a little bit of a drag. There’s additionally a Franchise mode, enabling gamers to work collectively, clan-like, in a globe-spanning grasp to high the leaderboards by satisfying weekly challenges, and there is help for asynchronous co-operative constructing, too. Lastly, for these merely eager to maximise their artistic freedom, there is a extremely customisable sandbox mode, enabling gamers to shift the stability between park administration and design as they are saying match.

What Planet Coaster 2 lacks, although, is any significant strategic evolution or sophistication. It jettisons a few of its predecessor’s mechanical breadth too, with the likes of eating places, inns, and safety all now inexplicably eliminated. The unique Planet Coaster was, after all, a desperately uneven affair, its highly effective creation instruments massively overshadowing an anaemic administration core, and it is disappointing – if maybe not particularly shocking – to see these weaknesses carry over to the sequel. It would function a guidelines of latest administration choices – from water filtration to energy distribution – however the implementation is uniformly superficial. Even water parks, Planet Coaster 2’s flagship new function, simply form of exist – a pair extra holes to dig, employees to make use of, and rides to construct – with little in the best way of prolonged integration.

For all its constructing refinements, Planet Coaster 2 feels prefer it marginalises its administration aspect even additional, its two halves co-existing, sometimes intertwining, however by no means in notably attention-grabbing or convincing methods. It is a backward step in comparison with Frontier’s great Planet Zoo, which struck a compelling stability between park administration and beautification. And it is particularly weak compared to Texel Raptor’s Parkitect, created with a fraction of Frontier’s assets, which regardless of ostensibly being a retro throwback, felt like a real evolution of the basic theme park sim components. Parkitect’s canny logistical layer of products distribution, significant distinctions between ‘backstage’ and ‘entrance of home’, to not point out its impactful climate system, all introduced a real sense of strategic cohesion between its two halves. By comparability, the handful of parts that Planet Coaster 2 does borrow from Parkitect – climate and surroundings scoring – really feel dramatically underdeveloped and awkwardly siloed.

Much more so than the unique, Planet Coaster 2 appears like a recreation for the builders and tinkerers, the look-what-I-made content material creators, and that is completely superb, even when it does really feel like a missed alternative. Frontier’s sequel has the identical unquestionable form of hypnotic attract as its predecessor relating to constructing and design – arguably much more so, given its multitude of toolkit refinements – hours vanishing in a contented haze of meticulous rock placement, or in getting the banking sweep of your brand-new coaster simply so. The difficulty is, for all it will get proper, Planet Coaster 2 usually feels surprisingly retrograde – cumbersome, counterintuitive, or simply plain contradictory – with an infuriating knack of getting in its personal approach.

Merely navigating menus is commonly an train in fiddly frustration, with Frontier’s try to design an interface that works for each keyboard and mouse and controllers by no means fairly working for anybody. Menus are unintuitively organised, key info is commonly lacking or obscured by poor or inconsistent presentation, superior settings regularly stay unexplained… On it goes in an analogous slapdash trend. Why, for example, does the Workshop not have a filter for flat rides, of all issues? Individually, these really feel like surmountable quirks, however all collectively they’re simply draining.

It would not assist both that suggestions is commonly so poor, even contradictory, that it is exhausting to inform what’s a failure in your half or a failure of the sport. “Employees are attempting to entry a employees constructing which is at full capability”, I’m knowledgeable at one level, rapidly adopted by the message, “There isn’t a employees constructing”. Encouragingly, Frontier has already began to handle a few of Planet Coaster 2’s extra egregious points, with extra substantial tweaks coming in December, but it surely’s nonetheless exhausting to shake the sense of backward slides elsewhere.

Certain, the trip choice is genuinely nice, with some great titillating thrives – tilting coaster platforms, backward flumes, oh my! However as simple and gratifying as it’s to construct the ‘park’ little bit of your theme park, Planet Coaster 2 appears to flounder on theme. Gone are the visually distinct archetype themes seen within the unique recreation – pirate, sci-fi, spooky, and western. As an alternative, changed by far much less distinct choices: aquatic, mythology, Viking, tropical resort, and cheerily company. It’s a combination that ends in a form of bland sludge of vaguely vacation-themed visuals – half vacation resort, half generic amusement park – that do not precisely sizzle with artistic potential. Moreover, Planet Coaster 2’s constructing blocks depart quite a bit to be desired, pre-built decorations, animatronics, and in-house surroundings blueprints all in decidedly brief provide.

After a number of hours within the unique Planet Coaster, I’d constructed a surprisingly elaborate Pirates of the Caribbean knock-off, full with sword waving buccaneers, burning ships, and cannon balls splashing within the water; by comparability, essentially the most unique nook of my park in Planet Coaster 2 is a tragic cave with a singing eel. Sure, it is completely attainable to improvise one thing extra fantastical utilizing geometric shapes and fiddly little props, however not everybody will wish to go so deep into the instruments. In fact, Planet Coaster 2’s new in-game Workshop means design-minded gamers can add and share their creations with anybody hoping for a extra informal play expertise – but it surely all feels slightly distasteful, as if Frontier’s offloading key foundational work onto the neighborhood. And Planet Coaster 2’s extra conspicuous gaps really feel much more cynical after they’re accompanied by £18 launch day DLC.

At its greatest, Planet Coaster 2 captures a lot of the magic of its predecessor, the place iMMAculate presentation and highly effective instruments manifest a recreation of infinite artistic potential. However its undoubted pleasures are haunted by interruptions and frustrations, missed alternatives, and simply far too many conspicuous holes the place it appears like one thing important ought to be. There’s an opportunity issues will enhance as Planet Coaster 2 evolves, however proper now, for all its core refinements, it usually feels lesser than its predecessor in too some ways.

A duplicate of Planet Coaster 2 was offered for overview by Frontier Developments.