Planet Coaster 2 (PS5, XSX, PC) - Releasing Fall 2024

[Blzer]

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https://store.epicgames.com/en-US/ne...l-announcement

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In 2016, Frontier Developments released Planet Coaster, a spiritual successor to the long-running and adored RollerCoaster Tycoon series. And (to use an inexcusable pun) they hit it out of the park. Theme park games have been an integral part of PC gaming since 1994’s seminal Theme Park, and Planet Coaster combined the intricacies of the RollerCoaster Tycoon franchise with Theme Park’s chunky cartoon art, creating a joyful management game. Now, some eight years later, Frontier is looking to repeat that enormous success with Planet Coaster 2. We can’t yet say if the new game is going to be better, but we can certainly say it’s going to be wetter. Planet Coaster 2 introduces water-based rides to the game, with promises of lazy rivers, log flumes, and even the terrifying-sounding “water coasters.” Look, we’re not rollercoaster doctorates or anything, but we have concerns. (It’s well worth checking out the trailer to witness the hilarious way it’s cut together, implying a large coaster is about to take an underwater plunge—but fear not, it’s an adjacent waterslide.) However, there's one feature everyone cried out for in the original Planet Coaster, and it's the real headline here: better coaster creation. The original Planet Coaster included vast numbers of pre-built designs, but the option to create them from scratch was fiddly and offputting. As coaster creation was one of RollerCoaster Tycoon’s defining aspects, Planet Coaster felt like a step back. This time, we’re being promised the option to hand-build both coasters and rides with a piece-by-piece system, which should make it way easier to create precisely what you want—and way more exciting to leap into the first-person view of your customers and see things up close. Planet Coaster 2's new level of detail extends to being able to redesign existing items, and customize the color and scale of every piece of every ride. This means that alongside a bunch of official new themes (Mythology, Resort, Aquatic, and Viking), you'll also be able to design your own spectacularly revolting looks—clashing pinks and reds for the win. The granular detail on offer sounds extraordinary. If you’ve ever fancied creating your own Chuck-E-Cheese, then first of all we wish you all the best in a strange life, but wow is this the game for you. There’s going to be an option to design your own animatronic shows, using what they’re calling an “event sequencer tool.” Mods are going to get weird. Of course, it’s not all ride design. You have to manage the entire park, from ticket prices to guest health. And again, Planet Coaster 2 is promising some remarkably intricate detail, extending to the amount of shade you offer your guests and even the availability of sunscreen. With all these water-based rides, you’re also going to want lifeguards to keep everyone alive. Drowning the guests remains frowned upon. On top of that, you’ll have all the usual important business to attend to—ensuring there’s enough overpriced food and drink for your customers, and gift shops to fleece all the parents as they leave. But this time out, there looks to be an even greater focus on the business of business. You'll have more options to manage your staff, organize maintenance of the rides and features, and match your employees’ actions to the wants and needs of guests. Speaking of guests, one of the original Planet Coaster’s best (and most subtle) features was the way people's faces reacted to rides or even standing in line for fast food, giving you instant feedback on your park. From the footage we’ve seen of Planet Coaster 2, this in-world feedback system looks like it's been enormously advanced, which bodes well. You don’t have to be a theme park maven all on your own, either. Planet Coaster 2 intends to make it far easier to share your parks with friends for a more collaborative experience. In the first game, sharing your park required either sending blueprints to a friend in a convoluted fashion or using mods—but in the upcoming sequel it’s all built in. Sharing a save lets anyone else jump into your park and perform their own work (or sabotage), or create a parallel dimension where the park evolved in a completely separate direction. Of course, you can still share blueprints and parks as before, via in-game menus or the Frontier Workshop. This means you can also download someone else’s park and then visit it in first-person, experiencing a day on their custom coasters. Hopefully they're safe. That's what it comes back to, right? The standout feature in Planet Coaster 2 is hand-crafting coasters and rides. The in-engine footage we’ve seen so far showcases a massive graphical improvement, adding water rides to your park, and the briefest glimpse of ride construction, as a waterslide is clink-clonked together (to use the scientific terms). But if you've ever played a RollerCoaster Tycoon game, you know just how tricky it can be to get coaster construction right—and how enormously satisfying it is when you’ve constructed something that thrills visitors without emptying their stomachs (or other internal organs). Planet Coaster 2 will live or die on how intuitive this system proves to be. As of now, it’s an idea in the aether rather than a system we’ve been able to play with, but if Planet Coaster 2 can offer something that just works, it’ll be a huge step forward. Look for Planet Coaster 2 on the Epic Games Store this fall.

First look at gameplay comes July 31st.

[Dead2009]

They had me at water based rides. I am excited for this.

[Blzer]

[jwilphl]

This has potential if they focus on improving the problems with the first game and avoid the pitfalls of feature creep. Early previews make it sound like that's their plan, so I'm cautiously optimistic. The new pathing system was my #1 requested fix and it looks loads better. Adding water park features was sort of a necessity, though I haven't seen water coasters yet. I hope they're included.

The optimization looks better, too, and that's probably the #2 priority for me. I don't care as much about graphical fidelity if the game runs like a potato. I wouldn't say the previews look outstanding, about the same as the first game, but I'm not offended by that assuming it runs considerably better.

The couple wonky things I noticed in the previews were (1) the water slides ending in pools where everyone is swimming, and (2) any used inflatables simply disappearing. The former is not a typical water park feature, while the latter feels like cop-out programming. Sort of how they've ignored animations of people actually sitting down on rides and such. I guess it's a shortcut and maybe saves time, among other things, but on the surface it comes across as lazy and breaks immersion.

My only other critique was an actual feature request, adding hotels (more than a small box you build a facade around), but I realize that would require a massive amount of time and assets. Probably not realistic for a game like this.

[Blzer]

[jwilphl]

Quite tempted to pre-order this because of the incentives, and I don't pre-order games anymore as standard practice. Tough call. Everything hits right where you want it, and they've addressed essentially every major complaint from the first game.

[Funkycorm]

This is sitting on my steam wishlist. I bought planet zoo before release and was and am still very happy with it. But I am hesitant because cities skylines 2 being on my wishlist. More and more, games on steam seem to come out less optimized.

I am excited about this game, but don't know if I want to pre order.

[Blzer]