Who doesn’t love a theme park? Even the not-so-inclined, there are always things to look at and a buzz in the air. Having not gone to an actual theme park in a long while, I jumped into ‘Planet Coaster 2’ by Frontier Developments, with a crack of the knuckles, ready to build the best theme park I could.

The premise is quite simple, you have inherited a mighty theme park chain from Oswald, a dapping entrepreneur who guides you with the aid of the likes of Eugene a leading Ride Engineer and a cast of crew to help along the way. Objectives from HR are given to you as you jump across the world fixing up your parks to be the talk of the town.

The people and staff, know what they want and it’s a thriving theme park. The loose narrative in Career mode is enough to push you along to improve each new theme park. I can’t say the characters are truly interesting other than being typical stereotypes which you would expect with awful chewy dialogue to boot.

The gameplay is the real nuts and bolts of these sorts of games. Very intricate you are bombarded with a load of menus, which I must admit was overwhelming for a beginner so you need to get accustomed to them before delving in. On console, the U.I. is a bit too much with a click of too many buttons sending you down a never-ending route of menus, I couldn’t help but think this would be a more enjoyable experience on PC.

Typical of most theme park simulators you must place rides and services in to keep your customers happy. This could be flat rides, coasters, food and beverage stalls, and new in this case, water park attractions with pools and flumes. You will need to pay attention to the guest’s needs with things like thirst, entertainment, toileting, sanitation, etc affecting their happiness and thus the overall rating of their experience.

A higher rating of your park the more people will come in, meaning sweet, sweet profits. Looking after your staff morale will also mean an effective park as they are willing to work longer shifts, perhaps even work for a lower wage.

The deep customisation is astounding. You can edit and research rides, divert electricity routes, adjust prices and even run advertisements to get a certain clientele into your park. You can even hope on the ride itself which is a full camera and cinematic experience to see all your hard work up close and personal. Adding to the customisation is a range of scenery, to enhance the riding experience for patrons. These could be themes allowing towering monuments to Zeus, fireworks shooting into the air, coral reef displays, or a simple natural feel of rows of trees and flowers.

Each new park is full of challenges to complete. These might be as simple as keeping people happy and increasing the rating, a researcher discovering ancient roller coasters for you to repair, or even decorating a brand with a theme. These can be ridiculously hard to achieve sometimes as there isn’t much instruction on how to do this, leaving me frustrated. Most though, are easy enough to work towards, you just need some time.

There is also a Franchise and Sandbox mode. I had a lot of fun in Sandbox mode, free to build to my desires. Franchise mode allows you to build with friends worldwide and across platforms in a leaderboard ranking parks against each other.

Graphically, the graphics are decent, especially with the rides and landscapes. I am not crash hot on the characters, the idol planconians, and NPC models but there are clear enough facial expressions to tell their moods. Each ride though is fantastic with energetic colours, waves crashing in the wave pools, weather patterns, and people hurling their guts up after getting off a ride; everything has such a holistic appearance of any real theme park.

The sound effects also complement the graphics in this overall feeling. There are fiery explosions on certain rides, splashing on waves, and even the clanking of gears as a high-octane rollercoaster climbs its tracks. The chattering of the customers themselves is enough of a driving force to keep you upgrading your park. 

One of the few things I can critique is the use of a controller on the console. The cameras are an awful fight fest at times even after tweaking settings. I was almost tempted to plug the mouse and keyboard in. 

Overall, Planet Coaster 2 is a sound addition to the theme park running sim genre. With fantastic customisation and unique rides, this was one great ride.

Written by: Stacey