Planet Coaster: Console Edition Reviews
Joy, wonder and engrossing park management come together to spectacular effect in Planet Coaster: Console Edition. Frontier are masters of the park building art, and as we enter a new console generation that's never been clearer.
Frontier Developments’ Planet Coaster: Console Edition brings a celebrated PC title to both modern and next-gen consoles. New content makes the game feel a refreshed experience, rather than just an old game ported to run on new hardware. I ran into some tech hiccups while playing on console, but it didn’t rain on my parade hard enough to make me wanna close down the park.
With a practiced expertise, Frontier has translated their fantastic coaster creator to the next-gen consoles without compromising the core qualities of what makes this game great. The radial menu and optional keyboard/mouse controls delivers theme park magic unlike any other, and once again claims its crown -- the king of coasters among mere tycoons.
Planet Coaster rides the line between warm and friendly accessibility and in-depth theme park management surprisingly well, even if it does occasionally wobble nervously with the switch to console controls. It's a largely serene experience with an utterly engrossing roller coaster creation tool that just makes the overall package that much better.
If you enjoy business management simulations, then we recommend purchasing a ticket for Planet Coaster: Console Edition. While the coaster creation controls can be unwieldy, Frontier's done a generally decent job of mapping a very complicated title to the DualSense controller. The title allows for a ton of creativity, but time-strapped entrepreneurs can also have fun with the many pre-made assets available. It's the kind of game where, once you begin building a park, you're basically pledging the next 30 hours of your life to doing it properly – but once you start seeing those profits rolling, you may find it difficult to quit.
Overall, Planet Coaster Console Edition is an absolute joy to play. It had a wonderful nostalgic element to it, taking me back to the days of Rollercoaster Tycoon and Theme Park World. Enough has been added to the game though to make it feel like a modern-day classic. The rides themselves are extremely customisable and you could easily spend over an hour just working on one rollercoaster if you fancied. When they say you can make anything you want, they pretty much mean it. The amount of detail you can add to your creations is astounding and so welcome. It’s a game you could lose hours, days and even months of your life to without zero regrets at all.
Planet Coaster on consoles is a game defined by its PC counterpart. It's slightly reduced in content but almost equal in complexity, for better or worse. We live in an age beyond console-specific PC ports like Civilization Revolution and Battlefield: Bad Company, but it still would have been great to see some console optimization for those looking for a plug-and-play experience in the living room. However, if players really want to dig into a huge sandbox of theme park creation, Planet Coaster is a deep and joyous rabbit hole that's worth an Annual Pass.
Planet Coaster is a solid theme park sim, and one I can see myself spending an unhealthy amount of time playing. I just need to remember not to be too hasty in loading games the second I get to the PS5 dashboard. Twice now I've immediately tried to boot it up within a minute of the PlayStation 5 getting to the home screen and crashed it so hard the console databases need rebuilding. Goes to show just how much I like theme parks, right?
Overall, a ticket to Plant Coaster: Console Edition is a great buy if you’re at all into theme park management. Frontier did a superb job bringing their excellent 2016 PC game to next-gen with console-friendly UI, controls, and everything you could need to get a big jump on your theme park building and management gameplay.
Planet Coaster launched back in 2016 on PC to amazing reviews. Management games are foreign to consoles; controllers can be cumbersome with the reliance on menus in the genre. Finally released on console, does Planet Coaster: Console Edition implement a strong control scheme to bring this fantastic game to a new audience?
If you’re a roller coaster aficionado, theme park sims don’t come much better than this. An incredible amount of work has gone into making Planet Coaster feel at home on console, and Frontier has done a commendable job of doing so without making sacrifices. It looks fantastic, performs admirably, and designing the park of your dreams has never been more enjoyable.
The console edition of Planet Coaster is a great port from PC that works perfectly with console controllers, and if you are a fan of simulation games and patient enough to learn all the mechanisms of the game, you will definitely enjoy it.
Review in Persian | Read full review
Planet Coaster: Console Edition is the kind of game that's great fun at its core but being able to get the most out of it will require a lot of patience. So, it's worth playing if you enjoy fine-tuning every intricacy of a park and don't mind getting used to its controls.
The obvious recommendation is to enjoy Planet Coaster on a PC, the way the game was meant to be played. Mod support and the easier usage of mouse and keyboard on PC make that version way more enjoyable and user-friendly than this PS5 port. But that doesn’t mean Planet Coaster: Console Edition is bad. Far from it. I had a blast with this version.
I think Planet Coaster: Console Edition is absolutely a worthwhile port. It manages to take an immensely complicated game and package it into something it was never designed to fit into. Just come in with a healthy serving of patience and willingness to forgive some glitches and issues, some banal and some a bit rough, especially if you are free playing and not in pre-built scenario parks.
For those who have always wanted to build the theme park of their dreams and haven’t played this on PC, Planet Coaster is a no-brainer purchase. The different game modes offer a good amount of challenge and the creativity and customization are bursting at the seams. The management options are admittedly still lacklustre after all these years and those not interested in the creative aspects and wanting something a little more challenging should probably wait before picking this one up. For everyone else, Planet Coaster is a wonderfully creative and aesthetically pleasing theme park game that raises a very high bar in the sim genre.
Planet Coaster was a pleasant surprise, making the transition from PC to PlayStation 5 seamlessly. The control scheme is, by far, the most efficient and easy to use experience I’ve ever had with a controller in a simulation game. Everything about the game looks sleek and shiny, making your parks pleasant to look at and fun to build. Along with that, the customization options, like build-your-own rollercoasters and scenery or pre-made models, allow players to essentially pick their difficulty level, offering complex and simple solutions depending on the player’s preference. Planet Coaster is my new addiction, joining RollerCoaster Tycoon as one of my favorite simulation games.
Planet Coaster arrives on consoles in scintillating form, offering up near-unlimited options to create the theme park of your dreams with ease. If there’s a hidden gem in the PS5 launch line-up, this is it.
Planet Coaster: Console Edition is definitely the best theme park management game around, with a great porting from the PC version and a very solid gameplay. We would have liked a meatier Career mode, but its Sandbox mode can be very satisfying and it'll be able to entertain even newcomers to the genre
Review in Italian | Read full review
Planet Coaster: Console Edition is a great example of optimization, of adapting from a device with its own mechanics like the PC to the next generation consoles. Despite the presence of small technical problems, the game manages to entertain, surprise and encourage players with themed challenges, creating the amusement park of their dreams.
Review in Italian | Read full review