Planet Coaster 2 Hands-On Preview – Diving Into Career And…

Summary

Planet Coaster 2 offers new features, including deep ride customization and dual park scenarios in Career Mode.
Heatmaps play a significant role in park management, offering detailed information like guest happiness and power distribution.
Sandbox Mode includes a power system for rides, water filtration for pools, and creative tools for customization and operation.

It's nearly time to splash into Planet Coaster 2, where players can create pools, flumes, and other water park-themed delights. Planet Coaster 2 offers numerous new and exciting features for water and coaster parks, including in-depth ride customization options. While Planet Coaster 2's hands-off preview gave a small taste of what's to come, The Best War Games recently had the opportunity to experience Planet Coaster 2's Career and Sandbox Modes first-hand in a jam-packed, hands-on preview event. Not only were we challenged with one of Planet Coaster 2's Career Mode scenarios, but we also had free rein to try out many of Planet Coaster 2's new tools and systems designed to enable players to create the theme parks of their dreams.

During the preview, we got to play around 45 minutes of one of Planet Coaster 2's Career Mode scenarios called 'Double Trouble,' a scenario that forms part of chapter three of Planet Coaster 2's campaign. In an exciting twist on many previous Planet Coaster Career Mode scenarios, 'Double Trouble' challenged us to work on a park split in half, effectually making it a dual park. It turns out Oswald Thompson's company 'Coaster Coast' has a rival theme park builder named Kenta Suzuki, who purchased a piece of land on the same plot and challenged us with specific building requirements on his side of the park. We also spent around 45 minutes in Planet Coaster 2's Sandbox Mode, trying the game's new tools and systems like power, wave machines, and more.

Planet Coaster 2 - Gameplay Trailer

Planet Coaster 2 shows off its coasters and water slides at Gamescom 2024, carrying on as spiritual successor to the RollerCoaster Tycoon franchise.

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By The Best War Games Staff

Planet Coaster 2's 'Double Trouble' Career Mode Scenario And New Heatmaps

Kicking things off, 'Double Trouble' began with a humorous exchange between Oswald B. Thompson, Eugene Newton, and Kenta in a familiar format. We then got Kenta's list of requirements displayed on the screen from the get-go. While silver and gold objectives were gated off for the preview, we could achieve a bronze medal by completing the following tasks:

Build a pool on Kenta's side of the park with a minimum of 450 Pool Prestige.
Build at least two flumes on Kenta's side and set them to open.

In our eagerness to get going, we accidentally placed a pool blueprint on the wrong side of the park. After realizing this, we soon located Planet Coaster 2's new heatmap function via a button at the top of the screen, which displayed which areas belonged to Kenta and Oswald using different colors and labels, as pictured below.

While players could use heatmaps on Planet Coaster' s rides to check things like G-force and nausea ratings, it seems heatmaps play a bigger and more park-wide, high-level role in Planet Coaster 2 from a park management perspective. For instance, Planet Coaster 2's heatmaps have much more information to cycle through, including guest happiness, power, scenery ratings, and more. While we didn't get time to check out everything, all of this felt like helpful additions to give players even more things at their fingertips.

Building Pools And Flumes In Planet Coaster 2's Career Mode

To meet Kenta's requirements, we also had to build two flumes from scratch and couldn't just use the various beautifully pre-designed pool blueprints. Fortunately, Planet Coaster 2's Pool Tool helps make its building mechanics quick and easy, so we constructed our basic pool shapes in little to no time. We used the Stamp Builder tool to stamp out square and hexagonal pools with one or two clicks. We didn't try the Draw tool, but it's another option. Kenta's list also challenged us to increase our Pool Prestige level with pool scenery with numerous options to choose from, like unicorn floats, rubber rings, ladders, and shells to name a handful. We also used the Stamp Builder to make paths to pools, which felt like a smooth and quick process.

Next, we built two flumes for our pools, which is an intuitive process that works similarly to coaster building in Planet Coaster. We chose to speed things up a bit by building an additional striped body flume around an existing pool blueprint. There were a lot of options to add twists and turns we wanted and more creative details if we chose. Of course, we also tested our flumes, added suitable entrance and exit points, plus connected them to paths, giving players some extra steps to think about.

Having A Blast In Planet Coaster 2's Sandbox Mode - Trying The Power System, Wave Machines, And Riding The Flumes

When trying Planet Coaster 2's Sandbox Mode, we focused mainly on ride building, customization, and opening a pool with a wave machine. Some big additions in Planet Coaster 2 are its new power system for rides and services like food and drink vendors, which cannot open without power, plus a water filtration system to keep pools clean. It took a bit of time to work out the power system mechanics, which involved connecting a generator to power distributors plus the rides or facilities themselves using cables, as pictured below. However, it all made sense once we'd figured out what to do with the aid of heatmaps. Rides and facilities that require power also display a handy red power symbol, showing what's needed at a glance and giving players an extra level of challenge to think about when setting up their parks.

Altogether, we managed to get two flat rides powered up and open - the spinning, ascending Aquatic Forge and Aquatic Teacups. We also added animatronic singing eels directly onto our tea cup ride to spice them up, a system that felt intuitive with lots of creative freedom without any fuss. Afterward, we added more pool scenery to our wave pool blueprint to boost its scenery rating, a blueprint that came with an in-built wave machine. Alternatively, players can attach wave machines and jets directly onto their built pools, again with little to no hassle. Players can also customize the intensity of the waves, which look realistic even with guests swimming across them. It's clear Frontier has considered all kinds of details to prioritize a level of theme park authenticity that shines and delights. Of course, we also had to ride the flumes ourselves in guest-cam mode, which brought big grins all around and fond memories of summer holidays abroad.

While we didn't get time to try the new water filtration system, we later discovered it works similarly to powering rides. We also checked out guests enjoying the park, noticing they can have mood symbols above their heads as one example of the ways that players can monitor guests' emotions.

Planet Coaster 2 Gives Players Numerous Creative Tools And Challenges

planet coaster 2 singing eels ride scenery

Overall, we think veteran and beginner Planet Coaster players alike will have an absolute blast playing Planet Coaster 2 with even more creative tools to sink their teeth into. While much of the park management systems and UI felt familiar, there were also a lot of changes and new additions that added an extra layer of challenge. As might be expected, there are also some changes to park management overview menus which seemed more in-depth but well-presented. Altogether, Planet Coaster 2's building and customization options also felt largely smoother and richer, giving players even more exciting ways to create and share the theme parks of their dreams.

Planet Coaster 2 is due for release in Fall 2024.

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