The business simulation genre is embedded in our PS1 during our formative years. Despite playing the best game on PC, we built a recreation resort at Theme Park and a medical complex at Theme Hospital and spent a few 14-hour CRT lost. Liked the mix they claimed.

Planet Coaster: The console version is turning its back on Frontier’s spiritual successor, the PlayStation 5, and it feels like a return to a quarter of a century after the launch of the powerful PS1 title, we’re forging prices and spanning gold brand new hardware ying. It’s a much more beautiful, deeper incarnation of the cult classics described above, but its glossy exterior has the same addictive goal below: making money – and Lots It is.

The game gives you a trio of different ways to play: the career splits into dozens of different scenarios, where you will be challenged to clear debt or build an eco-friendly park; The challenge is a more traditional therapeutic option, where you will start with limited funds and gradually grow your empire over time; Sandbox gives you unlimited cash and lets you be creative without a financial crisis.

For many, career training wheels will provide for you to get off your own job. Here you will take control of various pre-built parks with their own stories and claims. For example, you will be given the responsibility of restoring the venue’s fortunes, repaying large loans and sinking profits. Starting a new scene is really fun, you take some time to investigate what you’re working on and check the balance sheets.

These obviously increase the difficulty over time with each scene, including three sets of criteria for each challenge. Clear all of these and you will earn a gold star that will help unlock more difficult parks. It’s a fun mode that makes you really concentrate on the action; Most of the venues are already built in, you will immediately find yourself in the thick of the busy management work, but the scenery still gives you ample opportunity to keep your fingerprints.

Also great is that once you have finished working on a scene, there is no obligation to leave directly. If you have fun, you can continue building and developing the same resort until you are ready to continue. Our only criticism is that the voiceovers – which you leave compassionately after exiting the tutorial – are harder than a poorly-maintained coaster brake. Thanks, you can skip all conversations directly and you won’t miss too much.

The challenge is no doubt where you will spend most of your time though. Converting a littered stretch of land into a sprawling metropolis can be ultimately satisfying, especially if you have to balance your financial care with what your guests need. Your instant thinking and wise decisions have been able to transform a single path with a hot dog stand into a place where knowing thousands of guests want to enter is just fun.

The interface of the title is not without a fight, although it is ideal for such titles. Truth be told the implementation of the controller is good in most cases but there are a few swallows. Tweaking prices – especially at food stands – is annoying, although you can synchronize all similar installations to keep you from getting too frustrated. Coasters, on the other hand, are a disaster for drawing a pad – and given the importance of achieving the speed and flow of these perfect

Fortunately, the game comes with a ton of pre-built coasters that you can simply throw into your world, as well as support Frontier Workshop that lets you download designs from other players to effectively add to your parks. As the dream-like title has already proven, you can’t just lose some people’s patience and we were more satisfied than what we downloaded online when we spent a hellish time building our own coasters.

In fact, the game gives you a lot of freedom to create your favorite park. While there are plenty of resources available in the game, you can actually group different elements together to make your resort look truly unique. We really appreciate the way the game has incredibly deep creativity tools for those who want it, but it has more than enough pre-made resources for everyone.

Probably the biggest downside to playing consoles is that Frontier has introduced a new mechanical – the Oswald Eugene Counter to give it its full name – that effectively acts as a kind of thermometer to prevent your system from crashing. The power of the PS5 means you get more space to work than the PS4 version but there is still a firm limit. Assuredly, we have downloaded the absolutely objectionable park from the Frontier Workshop and we still have time to expand it.

The framerate is usually 60 frames per second, but the system must have started to strain with the resort we mentioned above. Overall performance is better on Sony’s new console, although we’ve got menus and navigation on the PS4 as a Tennessee bit teardrop, but everything on the PS5 is more responsive. Similarly, the visuals are sharper, rendering to a native 4K with some i-popping HDR displays.

Conclusion

If you enjoy business management simulations, we recommend purchasing tickets to Planet Coaster: Console Edition. Coaster-building controls may be unreasonable, but Frontier has done a general job of mapping the DualSense controller to very complex titles. It’s the kind of game where once you start building the park you’re basically promising to do it right for the next 30 hours of your life – but once you start seeing those benefits rolling in, it can be hard to let go.