Planet Coaster 2 is good. But then Planet Coaster was good, and this is really just an iteration of that. Frontier Developments has found its niche and is now focused on driving that nail home over and over again. With Planet Coaster 2 you get lots of new toys to play around with and… well, that’s it. Whether you feel the need to invest in an all-new Planet Coaster when the original is available on PlayStation 5 depends entirely on whether you like to get wet.
Yes, yes. “That’s what she said,” but it’s the truth. The big new selling point of Planet Coaster 2 is the ability to lay down pools and create a water park. You can make this water park a small section of your overall theme park. A “water world,” if you like aging yourself and, like me, can actually think up references to almost totally forgettable Kevin Costner films from the 90s. Or you can forget rollercoasters, teacups and other such traditional rides to focus entirely on the watery experience. A massive range of options awaits you…
In the sandbox mode, at any rate. The story mode, which is both bonkers and yet somehow also forgettable, is much more prescriptive, but it’s worth doing so you can become comfortable with the many menus and systems that the game has at play within it. By the time you’ve finished that you’ll be able to pinpoint with rapid accuracy why customers are getting unhappy with your park, while also investing in new rides and making sure that you’re maximising your profit. After all, this is a capitalism simulator. You need to be able to intuitively know whether raising the cost of using the toilets from $0.70 to $0.80 is worth the convenience of some people in the park deciding to simply crap their pants instead. These are the important decisions to make when you’re running a business.
Like with any other park management simulation, stretching all the way back to Rollercoaster Tycoon, there’s a thrill in slowly building a park up, filling it with all kinds of rides and novelties, and then watching the money roll in. However, the biggest joy of all is building those rollercoasters (and now, thanks to the waterparks, water slides) and perfectly balancing the kinds of thrills that make it a world-famous attraction while also… well, making sure people will finish the ride with their head still attached.
Frontier Developments has given players a deep and comprehensive toolset for this and once you wrap your head around it, you really will be able to make intricate rides that are the talk of the town… once you work out how to do it, that is. The biggest issue that Planet Coaster 2 on console has is that it’s asking the controller to do a lot of heavy lifting, and the level of control just isn’t quite fine enough to make ride design a joy in and of itself. On the plus side thanks to the “blueprints”, you can drop down pre-made designs and forgo the creative process entirely if you’re more interested in simply managing the park and don’t really care what the ride looks like.
On the simulation side, there are a lot of things to manage, from the macro (the general look and feel and flow of the park), right down to the micro (whether one specific part of one pool has a lifeguard watching it). You’ve got to make sure you’ve got enough staff to manage all the various jobs within the park, that you’ve got enough power generators to make every ride run smoothly, and that there are enough facilities for both guests and staff. Like with all modern simulators, Planet Coaster 2 doesn’t seem to be particularly interested in failing you for playing badly. I get that there’s a tension there for developers, given that people who spend hours carefully designing a park don’t want it to go bankrupt and have to restart. Nonetheless, much like with the Two Point sims or Kairosoft mobile titles, because it’s effectively impossible to fail it does mean the game simply fails, totally and utterly, as a simulator. Not a problem if you’re here just to play around and make theme parks. A significantly bigger problem if you do want an actual simulator.
So, yes, Planet Coaster 2 really just wants you to be creative. Placing down rides isn’t enough. You’ve got to aim for aesthetic beauty with scenery and interesting layouts that keep guests entertained as they wait for their rides. I must admit that I’m not patient enough to create intricately designed park layouts, so my efforts always look like I’ve just smashed scenery elements together to maximise the arbitrary scenery scores. With all that being said I know that a lot more people care about creating parks that they’d personally want to visit than playing a business simulation, so I guess I can’t begrudge Frontier Developments for taking that direction.
To be frank, here, I don’t think enough was done to make Planet Coaster 2 enough of a sequel. Adding water parks and slides, and more rides in general, were all perfectly rational ways to expand on the Planet Coaster experience, but we’re in an era now where DLC is getting Game of the Year nominations, and I do think that this feels more like a massive DLC drop at 50% of the price of a base game than a new, full-priced game. And as fun as the emerging “Frontier Simulation” formula is I also can’t help but wish that the developers would challenge themselves to try and create an actual simulator at some point. Make something with teeth, folks! You might be surprised just how invested your players get when their decisions have consequences for their parks, too.
