I also imagine that it will be fun to see your digital theme park running on a giant, 4K TV. But if you are a fan of theme parks or sim games and you don’t have a gaming PC, this is an alternative that will work better than you’d guess. Do you want Planet Coaster: Console Edition if you already have it on your decent PC? Probably not. Couch creatorsĪnd I guess that’s a good point to raise. It could be something that you get used to with more time, but I doubt I’ll ever be as efficient with it as I am on PC. You still have access to the same tools and options as you do on PC, but laying down track and making adjustments to things like the angles of your banked turns takes more time on console. Things become more complicated when you’re actually building roller coasters. And just like on PC, you can share your creations online or download the works of other players and import them into your parks. But you can also access a sandbox mode, where you can make a giant theme park free of monetary restrictions. Some of those lessons may only help when playing through the game’s scenarios, which have you complete specific tasks while maintaining a profitable park. This teaches the basics of Planet Coaster, including building rides, creating paths, decorating, and raising prices. It’s also relatively easy to learn these controls, and the basic mechanics of the game, thanks to a new, voiced tutorial. These contextual controls change based on your activity, but the game will always tell you what they are on the left side of the screen. For example, if you’re placing an object, like a tree, you can hold the X button to raise or lower it.

You can also access a radial menu with some shortcuts with the Y button.Ĭontrols change based on what you’re doing. You use the A button to select objects from your park, and you use the shoulder bumpers and D-pad to navigate menus. The right stick and trigger buttons control the camera. The console version does a good job of translating the PC game’s controls to a gamepad.

If you see some awkwardness, part of that is me figuring out the console UI and part of it is dealing with the lag. This introduced a bit of input lag that shouldn’t be a problem when you’re playing on an actual console.

I played my demo via Parsec, which allowed me to access Frontier’s console version remotely.

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