For those of us that reside in the United Kingdom, we probably have about three days of actual sunshine a year. So, a water park for us isn’t really necessary. And if there is one, chances are it’s indoors.
But you can’t beat a good water park, so I am grateful that Planet Coaster 2 is here to not only appease my love of theme park building, but now also of water park building.
Coming four years after the first game, and for the first time alongside the PC release, Planet Coaster 2 takes the already solid foundations of the first game, and douses it with water. The main feature this time around is the inclusion of water parks and associated slides, lazy rivers and flumes.
You may be thinking that the addition of water parks could have been done via a large DLC pack for the original Planet Coaster, but what is included here is far more than just a few simple slides. Add to that plenty of new features, and an idea borrowed from Planet Zoo: Console Edition, and this is very much a worthy sequel.
As such, even series veterans should heed the new tutorial in the Career mode. Even if that means having to put up with some of the inane chatter. One Newton brother will introduce the traditional Planet Coaster park creation; his cooler, trendier surfer brother is left to the water section. Then, in the main section, there is talk of ancient races that build roller coasters, and other various bits of plot. It is a well thought out attempt to inject some extra lore into why you are repairing roller coasters, but it does fall a bit flat.
The early game introduces one of the new mechanics: Utilities. It isn’t just enough now to plonk a ride blueprint down and expect it to work straight away. It needs to be hooked up to a generator and a distributor before it will work. Likewise, too for water-based activities, these will need water pumps and filters. It echoes the infrastructure that was required for animal exhibits in Planet Zoo: Console Edition, adding an extra element of simulation to Planet Coaster 2. If that is what you are looking for, then it is surely a good thing.
If this level of simulation is a bit too much for you, it can be turned off completely in Sandbox mode. I like the objective-based gameplay of Career mode, but Sandbox mode is the ultimate chill out experience for Planet Coaster 2. You set the rules and options exactly how you wish – with a generous amount of ways to tailor your own game – with almost no limits. Everything is unlocked for you to create the park of your dreams: purely theme park or water park, or a healthy mix of both. The choice is entirely up to you.
To get started with a water park, firstly you need water. Seems fairly self-explanatory, but it also needs to be a specific type of water. Creating a big lake in your park looks good, but this is not suitable for a water park. You need a specific pool created, but the options are a bit limited when designing one. You have preset ones which are fine for the job at hand, but freely creating a pool feels limited in the sense that it is fiddly if you want to work with a particular shape in mind. I quickly learned that having a nicely designed and shaped pool for guests to enjoy would be something that I simply didn’t have time for.
Designing a water slide is relatively easy, for those that dabble in designing their own roller coasters that is. They both follow a general process. Don’t do what I did though when creating a platform for your slides to start from: you can easily create a staircase leading up to it which doubles as your queue. But the platform doesn’t need an exit path, because the exit is the pool of water below. Shamefully I spent far too long trying to create a path up to the platform to act as the exit.
But even if you don’t create your own slides, roller coasters or rides, the blueprints given to you are more than enough to get you started with. There are plenty of familiar rides returning, along with a host of new ones that you wish you were riding. There appears to be far more coasters than before, with many of these being unique. I particularly like the one that features in the tutorial featuring Medusa, reminding of a similar real-life ride in Sea World, but with a tilting element to make it feel much more modern.
Some of these newer and more exciting rides will need to be unlocked in other modes outside of Sandbox mode. But Planet Coaster 2 has a novel Research system that doesn’t require you to unlock it again and again for every park you build. This time, there is an overarching research tree, and you accrue points across all parks, provided you have built a workshop in a park for mechanics to spend time in. Then, as you progress in the Career mode, you can unlock new tiers of various items to unlock with your research points.
And it isn’t just new rides. These upgrades cover more elements to coasters and water slides, but also include improved transport ‘rides’, and bigger and better power and water facilities. I’d go as far as to suggest that your priority in any park is to get a mechanic and a workshop in there first, helping to maximise your research output.
That goes doubly so for a multiplayer park, because you may be able to generate additional research when not actually playing. Multiplayer parks are a bit of a strange one for Planet Coaster 2, as whilst additional players can contribute to the one theme park, only one of them can be playing at a time. It may be down to technical limitations but on one hand you aren’t able to work together at the same time on a park, it can be almost as much fun jumping into a shared park and seeing how much has been done whilst you have been away. And perhaps best of all, if you don’t agree with anything, simply change it when you are logged in and hope your partner doesn’t notice when they return later on.
At first, I was sceptical that the addition of water parks didn’t justify a full sequel being released. But there is a lot more going on in Planet Coaster 2 below the surface that does warrant this release. Alongside a ton of new features, rides, scenery and more, you have things like the ability to add priority passes and queues, needing to hook rides up to generators and distributors and now being able to work together to build a dream theme park.
Planet Coaster 2 is a worthy follow-up and another fab continuation of the wider ‘Planet’ franchise. The water parks don’t intrude too much, ensuring that this remains a theme park creator at its heart, and most of the new inclusions add to that simulation side of things successfully. Some unnecessary lore and ongoing frustrations with using a controller for a simulation game aside, there can be no doubt that Frontier Developments remain the standard bearers for simulation management games on consoles.
Planet Coaster 2 Arrives, Delivering the Ultimate Theme Park Sandbox – https://www.thexboxhub.com/planet-coaster-2-arrives-delivering-the-ultimate-theme-park-sandbox/
Taking a Dip into Planet Coaster 2’s New Waterparks – https://www.thexboxhub.com/taking-a-dip-into-planet-coaster-2s-new-waterparks/
The Rollercoaster Ride Continues: Planet Coaster 2 Promises Bigger and Better – https://www.thexboxhub.com/the-rollercoaster-ride-continues-planet-coaster-2-promises-bigger-and-better/
Buy Planet Coaster 2 on Xbox – https://www.xbox.com/en-GB/games/store/planet-coaster-2/9PK5WS0HXQKQ/0010
