It’s been far too long coming, but Planet Coaster: Console Edition does a great job of bringing the charms of theme park management from PC to console. With a good few months still to go before release, there’s plenty of time to continue to refine and iron out these kinks. The controls also struggle (or more accurately, I struggle with them) when pulling off steep dives with the track at weird angles, giving me a bit of disconnect between whether the analogue sticks are acting relative to the camera angle or the track.
My biggest issues came from trying to head back in and edit segments, with the controls feeling a touch imprecise and obtuse when trying to select what I wanted and then feeling pretty awkward to reattach to the rest of the track. There’s also templates for certain turns and swoops that you can throw in quite easily. Again, it’s simple and intuitive to drop piece after piece, twist the track with different cambers as you go through twists, turns and drops that would elicit at least a small whimper. Think the Wallace & Grommit toy train ride, but a little less frantic.
There’s two methods you can use here, either from the bird’s eye view that most of the game takes place in, or switching to a first person view to effectively ride the coaster as you’re building it. Again, you have pre-built coasters that you can just slap down (if you’ve got enough space for them), but you can also build something bespoke in any of the coaster themes that the existing coasters use. Of course, Planet Coaster’s main appeal is going to be the ability to create your own rollercoasters. To help, there’s the twinned features of a much larger pool of pre-built blueprints for players to use, and the Frontier Workshop, so that players can create scenery and scenarios and share them with others. As in the PC version of the game, you can painstakingly place individual items and construct the perfect scenery in your park, but that’s obviously more awkward and finicky on a controller compared to a keyboard and mouse. One area that Frontier have been able to enhance is the ease with which you can put all of this together using a controller. They’re an effective trio in the game’s opening level, as you get to the basics of placing and opening your first ride, lay out the path that the waiting line takes, jazz it up with some plants, scenery and eye-catching performances from staff to keep them entertained, and then set the price just high enough that punters don’t feel ripped off.
#PLANET COASTER WORKSHOP HOW TO#
Thompson, eager to induct you as a new trainee into the park’s management, a shrewd businesswoman looking to eke every single penny possible out of your punters, a sassy young social media starlet giving you tips on how to add a little jushe and sparkle to the park’s design and the kinds of rides you have on show. The game now has an overhauled tutorial and path through the career with a number of new characters thrown into the mix to lead you through its opening.