Has anyone got it on PS5? Please let us know your thoughts if so!
So, I caved in and pre-ordered last night, despite my preference for a disk (if I like the game, I'll still buy a disk eventually when they're going cheap for posterity). I've been playing the game for 3 hours now, so my views are very pleminary and will pretty much extend to coaster building which is what I used the old game for more than anything.
The first immediately noticeable change is the drop in frame rate. Whereas the original had a decently high frame rate throughout, this seems capped to 30fps. I'm not at all against that actually, as I'm suspecting it's being capped to meet console licence performance targets so that it's stable, and could be a work around for the piece counter limit. This, the new subdued colours, weather conditions, and motion blur (which can be switched off) gives it more of a cinematic feel. It feels more realistic and less cartoony that the original.
It kind of looks a lot like No Limits 2 a little bit. It's still bright and colourful, but whack some grey clouds in the sky and keep those annoying characters out of the way, and the POV's look quite realistic. The lighting and shadows are excellent actually. Coloured light bounces off of metal surfaces rather than the high sheen of the original, shadows become dull and blurred the further the object is away from a surface. I know plenty of games do this on PS5, but in such a vast management simulation game, it really looks much better.
The coaster building is a mixed bagged. I'm pleased to report that almost every issue from the first game has been rectified. There's no longer awful jerkiness when you transition between track pieces no matter how much you smooth. You no longer need to fiddle with 4mtr methods and exploit the game mechanics to get good results. You can just profile a coaster well, smooth it and it'll look good.
As for the smoothing tool, there's nothing not to like. It's much faster, intuitive, and effective. You can choose the strength of it, and what you want it to do (like sort out banking only, or smooth turns only etc). Absolutely brilliant. You choose the amount of track pieces you wish to smooth, and whether you want to go forwards or backwards, and away you go. It moves along the coaster automatically with each button press. Extra faff that's very welcome. No more mistakes, or moving along at a snails pace, selection a section at a time. It also doesn't ruin your intended profiling as much as before (like how it used to take heart lining out or make turns too tight). If it does, just undo it and fiddle with the settings until you get what you want.
The 4mtr method isn't completely dead. I tried building some rather tricky non-standard elements and it still requires some precision or the smoothing tool will just take it all out when it's to go "all". But you can build pretty standard coaster elements with ease now. My concern with this, however, is that so far it seems to take a huge chuck of skill out of the game. My son has dabbled with the first game from time to time, but he managed to build a Vekoma launch coaster that looks real and perfectly smooth in about 45 mins with ease.
I wouldn't mind that as much if it was to make the game more accessible to less seasoned players, but if fails on that front because the controls are much more complicated for some unknown reason. Remember how they mapped the controls to a console controller quite ingeniously in the first game? Well for some reason, they thought that the camera needed to be accessed differently, but this comes at the expense of laying track pieces.
Pointlessly, you now have to toggle between lifting and turning track pieces, to banking them and choosing their length. It's incredibly more faffy. I keep speeding up the camera and bringing up the weather forecast by mistake, because I'm holding square and it's just keeps doing things I don't want it to do. I don't think any player ever minded using the d-pad to speed up and pause the game speed, I don't need a trigger dedicated to it. Who asked for this? I wouldn't mind if the game had a 'classic controls' option, but if it does I haven't found it yet.
Another thing I haven't found yet, is how to speed the game up when viewing the coaster with the testing camera. I regularly test when building, but at the moment I'm sitting there watching a coaster creep a lift hill slowly. Press up on the d-pad and it just makes the screen go white and some storage enjoyment thingy menu comes up.
Some of this will just be adjusting to new controls. But for the life of me I don't understand why we need to toggle back and forth when laying track pieces. If doesn't seem to have anything to do with the extra options.
