Let me be up front to start- I know I'm the Top 20 guy, but admittedly the Christmas season got away from me, as well as a hectic start to the new year. If you're looking for a new top 20, then take a look at the newest thread for more info, should be a lot of fun. You can find that link here- http://www.rfgeneration.c...topic=19486.msg276303#new

But with not having a top 20 to post for January, I thought it would be fun to talk about my recent experience with Planet Coaster: Console Edition, released in November by Frontier Games.



Back in March, when the COVID restrictions first started hitting, I found myself with a lot of extra time on my hands. At that time I was substitute teaching, and while there's plenty of work while schools are in session, there's not so much when all the school districts suddenly close.

With the extra time, I found myself craving a theme park building game. It wasn't a genre that I had kept up with as far as what current gen consoles had to offer, but it didn't take long to find that Planet Coaster was the game that would scratch that itch, as it was made by the same develepor as those behind Roller Coaster Tycoon 3. The only problem, I'm a console gamer, and Planet Coaster was only available on PC. However, it was set to release in June for consoles. While, I usually don't get hyped for new release games, I couldn't wait for June to hit and be able to try it. June came, and...(crickets).

I found myself checking twitter almost daily for any updates, and in July, that update happened. The game would be available in November, and what it really meant was another 4 months of building up hope and anticipation. On Christmas, the nine month build up ended. But I've been burned before by games that didn't live up to my hopes.

So did it live up to the hype?


First off, the interface is as user friendly as you could ask for considering the game uses a controller and not a mouse. The tutorial scenarios are useful, but don't overstay their welcome, and it's not long before the game cuts you loose with increasingly challenging scenarios.

This is also the first glimpse of how smart Frontier is in presenting the game. Each scenario has different park building options available, encouraging you to be creative. But the more you play the game, the more you find each scenario is also teaching you how to solve the more complex problems that can occur within the game as the parks get more and more massive.

For example, one early scenario has you taking over a park that wants to stick to family based rides, and expand it based on taking advantage of it's natural beauty. One of the long term goals of the scenario is to pay off a loan that has been taken out on the park.

The game never comes right out and tells you directly, but as you start to progress in the scenario you realize that it's really about learning money management within the game, as it's really easy to overspend and ultimately destroy the park's future if you're not at least mindful of the finances.

But at its core, it really is just a gorgeous game that gives you many options to let your imagination run free. There is so much to build, and the truth is I've only been able to scratch the surface with the options available. There are so many things you can do, but the game gives you these options in a way that never feels overwhelming or unintuitive. It's been a fun and very gratifying experience with what I've seen so far.

I should put out this disclaimer. As I was reading up on the console version, wanting to make sure it would be worth keeping my hopes up for, there are reports of the game being too big for the consoles to handle. While I haven't experienced this myself, I also have played the game without using multiple save files in order to combat this, and not tried to overload the game with coasters. It has not lessened the experience at all.

Overall bottom line, I have absolutely loved this game so far. Very much worth the wait, and if you're a fan of the old Roller Coaster Tycoon games, it's definitely worth your time.

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