Preview: Planet Coaster 2 Pulls Back the Curtain on PS5 Theme Park Magic

There’s a thrill to roller coasters. As you clunk, clunk, clunk up the track, you start to contemplate your life. You should have asked that cute person out, should have called your mum more, shouldn’t have gotten on this terrifying contraption. And then, as you crest over the apex of the climb and see the world below you, everything melts away as you scream and cheer while the coaster rattles you around its winding, looping, twisting rails. The first-person view in Planet Coaster 2 manages to capture some of that magic and the rest of the game pulls back the curtain on how it’s made.

At a preview event in Thorpe Park, we got hands on with the game’s campaign and sandbox mode. If you’re familiar with other Frontier management games, like Jurassic World Evolution or Planet Zoo, you’ll know what’s ahead. The story takes you through a series of scenarios designed to introduce you to the various aspects of the game. It’s witty and gets you to grips with the basics well.

Before you can design your first roller coaster, you’ve got to build and staff the park. Your visitors will demand amenities such as toilets, food, bins, places to sit, and nice scenery. Your staff also need to be kept motivated with nice recreational areas, but these look ugly, so you’ll need to keep them away from the main park or risk spoiling the illusion for your guests. It makes you think about theme parks in a whole new way — they’re not just places of wonder, thrills, and escape; they’re businesses that require a lot of creativity to run.

Dealing with the game’s menus with a controller is a horrendous user experience. Connecting a USB mouse and keyboard might be a hassle, but it’s so much smoother than trying to navigate all the build and management options with the clunky controller interface. But while its control scheme is definitely worse, will the PS5 version have any other shortfalls?

“We’ve worked really hard to ensure a good parity across the platforms,” said Adam Woods, senior executive producer on Planet Coaster 2. “The consoles will have a park complexity limit to ensure the game will run smoothly,” however, so you won’t be able to build parks quite on the same scale as PC players, unfortunately.

There’s still a lot you can do, though. You can attach scenery objects like confetti cannons, flamethrowers, and even trees to the roller coaster trains, meaning the spectacle of each ride can be truly wild. There’s a big focus on imagination, with the ability to edit individual panels across most kinds of buildings, so even your toilets and drinks kiosks can be tailored to suit the vibe of your theme park. If you want to make an ocean-themed water park, you have the tools and rides to do so.

There’s also incredible attention to detail, even when zoomed in. Many management games keep you at a distance — preferring you only see the forest, not the trees — but Planet Coaster 2 shines under the microscope. Guests cheer on rides and even throw their litter into bins — “they’re a very good shot,” Woods told us. There are some issues with guest collisions when there are big crowds or they’re all in a pool, but it’s not enough to ruin the immersion outright.

Unlike The Sims or Roller Coaster Tycoon, you can’t torture attendees. “The tone of this game is very much about creating the best day out for your guests,” Woods explained. If a ride breaks down, visitors simply won’t use it until it’s repaired by one of your maintenance staff (if you try to test an incomplete roller coaster, the train with the dummies in it will explode in a brilliant shower of confetti, though). How quickly they walk and work is determined by their morale, so it’s important to keep them happy so they can keep your paying customers happy.

Learning how to balance the various needs around the park was a challenging yet rewarding experience; the campaign does a solid job of teaching and then letting go of your hand so you can implement your knowledge however you see fit. Even with a mouse and keyboard, the nitty-gritty can still be finicky, though.

Once you place a ride, you also have to add an entrance queue and exit path — one you can place directly from the ride’s interface, the other makes you back out of all menus to open a path-specific one. You also have to change the ticket price of rides from $10 to free (if you’re charging for entry to the park), connect it to the power grid, and then open the ride once it’s been tested. If you forget any of these steps, all of which take you into different menus and pages on the ride’s interface, you’ll be left scratching your head as to why no one is getting on your costly new attraction.

As for the roller coasters themselves, there’s definitely an art to them. You can choose from pre-made designs or build your own, and your first few will look like a mess. It may be hard to spot unless you’re really looking, but real-life coasters weave throughout themselves a lot and are remarkably space-efficient. Of course, you can build a ride that goes across your entire park, but then you’ll have ugly supports everywhere.

Adjusting elements of the track like elevation, twists, and lateral turns is straightforward, and you can add some pre-made parts like loop the loops, corkscrews, and more. It takes the pressure off and allows you to get to the testing stage quickly, especially when combined with the auto-complete feature. Be warned, though, this won’t necessarily complete your track correctly, so you may have a turn or a rise that’s too extreme and needs to be toned down for safety reasons or simply doesn’t work as the coaster train can’t build up enough speed to get through.

There’s a lot more to Planet Coaster 2 than just the roller coasters, so if you like the intricacies of management games, this one is shaping up nicely. If you prefer the creative element of theme park design, there’s a lot on offer, and although it’s a bit of a pain to access, it's all worth it when you take that first-person ride on your new roller coaster.

Planet Coaster 2 releases for PS5 on 6th November 2024. Are you looking forward to the theme park management gameplay simulation of Planet Coaster 2? Get started on your dream roller coaster in the comments below.