What the game lacks in difficulty and ground-breaking park management functionality it makes up for in park building. Planet Coaster‘s customization tools continue to be the shining star. is pretty intelligent compared to other simulation games I’ve played, and I found myself smiling at their reactions and expressions.
#PLANET COASTER SCENERY RATING WINDOWS#
The ability to resize or move the windows around so you can more easily view certain windows at the same time would be greatly appreciated.
Overall the user interface isn’t hard to figure out, but it can get a bit clunky at times (especially the Park Management screen). These tutorials did end up filling in a few knowledge gaps I was previously missing, however. Instead, the game just opened up the Steam web browser overlay to a few videos on the Planet Coaster YouTube channel. I was hoping these would be insightful how-to-play videos located in-game. The final version added a “Tutorial Videos” button on the main menu. In the beta version, there was no in-game tutorial outside of the useful contextual help menus.
The constant tinkering is time-consuming, but extremely satisfying once you achieve your goal and get to ride your masterpiece in a first-person view. When you test your coasters, you can look at heat maps that show where on the track your guests feel the most excitement or fear, but it’s not always clear what track elements can actually alter these values. Getting your design to meet the excitement, fear, and nausea requirements can take a lot of tinkering. You have the ability to start various marketing campaigns targeting different age groups, but most of the time these aren’t necessary outside of completing the scenario quicker. The guests just constantly flow into your park in a steady stream as long as your entrance fee isn’t insanely high. I found these to be probably the easiest of all of them (outside of hiring park staff). Some the objectives require you to have a certain number of park guests. Probably the worst thing that happened to me was one of my burger stand employees quit because I accidentally set two of the same stand next to each other and she was bored since hers wasn’t getting enough business. And if I was short on cash, the game provides the ability to take out loans with a relatively low-interest rate. Rides rarely seem to break down, and when they do I usually had the cash to employ max skilled mechanics to fix them quickly. I never ran into any situation in Planet Coaster where anything like that could really happen. Some combination of unhappy and vandalizing guests, broken down rides, or even ride crashes and guest deaths would occur if you left your park unwatched, and your park value and rating would plummet. In many other simulation games, including the Roller Coaster Tycoon games, this hands-off approach would end very, very badly. Planet Coaster gives you the tools to create and customize everything you can imagine, from building Hogwarts to setting how salty your fries are. Its extreme focus on detail and customization is what truly gives this game life. The game modernizes the genre while giving it its own unique, detailed, and loving touch. With the sudden influx of new theme park simulation management games, Planet Coaster stands apart from both its competition and predecessors. We spent significant time playing through and reviewing the beta before the game’s official release. It wants you to enjoy crafting every little detail of your park and seeing your creations bring joy to your park guests. The fun-loving nature of the song perfectly mirrors the overall feel of Planet Coaster: using your imagination and creativity to craft the theme park of your dreams, smiling the entire time. And Guthrie absolutely nails it out of the park. The musical mastermind Jim Guthrie helped write and perform the game’s soundtrack, titled You, Me, and Gravity. The Planet Coaster theme song has been stuck in my head for the past two weeks like white on rice.