Planet Coaster has been out for a couple of years on PC and is one of the most renowned theme park simulators out there. Since I’m lacking a proper gaming PC to play it, I was beyond thrilled to learn that the Console Edition launched on the Xbox Series S/X and is completely free to download if you’re a member of the Game Pass program. Porting a game like this to consoles isn’t an easy job so let’s find out if Frontier managed to pull this off. Is this the theme park simulator we’ve all been waiting for?
From the ground up
Right from the start, you’ll be greeted with cheerful music and colors popping from your television screen. It’s clear to see that this Console Edition was made with a lot of love and an eye for detail as it stays completely true to the PC version. Unlike many other PC to console ports, this Console Edition is created from the ground up, always with the controller in mind. This results in easy to navigate menus and full control over your virtual park. In seconds you’re in full control over your park and the controller feels right at home, enabling you to do whatever you want to do, and there’s a lot to see and do here! Planet Coaster: Console Edition is literally packed with content, although the base game doesn’t come with the previously released DLC, even without it, you’ll have fun for the coming months!
A lot of possibilities
If you’re new to Planet Coaster, you’ll want to start with the Career Mode. This offers the perfect starting point for your new adventure as it will teach you everything you need to know in order to successfully run your park. As you might have guessed, there’s more than just the creation of insane rollercoasters. As a true leader of the park, you’ll need to learn and master a lot. Ranging from controlling your budget to making sure the park is clean and the visitors are happy. The career mode will take its time with a rather lengthy tutorial to show you the ropes before it challenges you with different problems that are waiting for your solution. A lengthy tutorial such as this can easily become boring, but that’s not the case in Planet Coaster as a lot of time went into keeping it as fun as interactive as possible. During your first minutes, fully-voiced park veterans will show you how to tackle most problems. I had a blast learning and mastering everything and before I knew it, I was trying to clear all challenges as fast as possible, all with the ease of my controller.
The more I played, the more complex and challenging it all got. Where I was taking care of individual rides before, I was trying to build new attractions in harsh environments later. Once I cleared the challenges I could continue growing my park or I could move over to the next challenge. In order to get the career mode flowing, it’s advised to just move over to the next challenge, if you want to create the park of your dreams, you can always access the Sandbox or Challenge mode.
The park of your dreams
Once you’re done in the Career Mode, you can let your imagination run wild in the Sandbox Mode. Here you’ll get a blank canvas and the ability to create the park of your dreams. If a piece doesn’t exist, you can try to create it from scratch, even better, you can make everything from scratch if you really want to! Admittingly this isn’t the best plan of attack, especially since a controller doesn’t give you the same amount of mobility as a computer mouse does, but it’s pretty impressive to know it’s possible. Instead of trying to create my own rides and food stands, I used the blueprints, giving me easy access to a plethora of objects. Spending time creating the park of your dreams is extremely addictive and it’s all about having fun here. Unlike the other modes, you’ll have an unlimited amount of cash here so you can really go all out in the creation of your park. Still looking for the ride of your life? Maybe the Frontier Workshop has exactly what you’re looking for.
Everything you create from scratch can be uploaded and shared using the Frontier Workshop. It’s here where you’ll find the creations of other players and if we can see what the PC community has been able to come up with, I can’t wait to see what the console players will do in the coming months. It’s a bit of a shame the Workshop doesn’t link to the PC version since that one is literally filled with objects but I’m pretty sure it’s something that will grow over the next coming months. It’s true that it’s a bit harder to create decent rides and objects with your controller but I think they are plenty of skilled players waiting to impress everyone with their creations in the Frontier Workshop. Basically, it’s a bottomless pit filled with designs to enable the continuous upgrades of your park. Just be warned, there’s a limit of objects that can be placed in your park at once, if you go over that limit the game won’t run as smoothly anymore. Luckily, if you’re playing this on your Series X, reaching that limit will take a lot of time.
That oldskool theme park simulator feeling
If you want to replay the theme park simulators of your youth, the Challenge Mode is possibly the closest thing to that experience. In this mode, you’ll start with a park that you’ll need to maintain and keep relevant for your ever-growing crowd. An easy task on paper but in reality, it’s not that easy at all. You’ll have to keep track of your budget while you’re constantly forced to keep your rides as thrilling as possible and your park as clean that you could eat from its ground. It’s a fun and challenging mode that immediately teleported me back to the days I was grinding Rollercoaster Tycoon on my dad’s PC.
The best thing about it is the fact that even in the more difficult challenges, the game runs incredibly well on the Xbox Series X. I had some minor hiccups but nothing that took me out of the game or forced me to restart. The only weird bug was language-based but we know that Xbox struggles to get those things right here in Belgium, it was an easy fix and after my first initial reboot, I could enjoy the game in the language I preferred. This once again demonstrated how well this port is done and how right at home the game feels on Microsoft’s new console.
Conclusion:
Planet Coaster: Console Edition is a work of art and runs incredibly smooth on the Xbox Series X. Thanks to the easy to navigate menus, you’ll never lose track of what you’re doing, and clearing all those challenges with your controller will immediately feel like your second nature. This is how every developer should handle a PC to console port and it’s definitely a game everyone should play. Especially since it’s completely free for those with a Game Pass subscription. Be prepared for the ride of your lives!
