2023-07-20 14:47:05
Theme Park, RollerCoaster Tycoon, PlanetCoaster… Theme park management games are legion. And yet, Bandai Namco wanted to enter the market with Park Beyond, which is quite original in many ways.
Hugely saturated in the 1990s and early 2000s, the market for park management games is much less busy today. As proof, the last big game of its kind was already released seven years ago. It was the excellent Planet Coaster, developed by Frontier. So there was a gap to fill, that’s what Bandai Namco wanted to do with this Park Beyond. Announced at Gamescom 2021, the game is being developed by Germany’s Limbic Entertainment…the daddies of Tropico 6.
Tropico is a completely crazy Cold War-era Caribbean island management game. If the development teams wanted to make Park Beyond a more serious, credible and “grounded in reality”it is nonetheless embellished with a deep touch of humor and delirium.
But how could Park Beyond stand out from its illustrious predecessors Theme Park and RollerCoaster? Thanks to this aspect completely barred precisely. You will discover that in every corner of the title, whether it is the daily management of the park, the various tools or the prefabricated attractions, Park Beyond resembles a completely wacky cartoon. It might have been more so, but that’s a developer choice that we respect.
You have all the weapons in hand to build the park of your wildest dreams.
The creative possibilities in Park Beyond seem limitless. To accommodate this, the developers have put together an extremely well done tutorial that will take you by the hand for the first hour of play. You will thus discover how to make your own roller coaster with the pitch, the pivot, the different modules or even the environment to exploit to the maximum. A creation system that seems to know only one limit, your imagination, and which could leave more than one on the floor without enough explanation. From A to Z, the tutorial accompanies you and leaves no questions unanswered. And yet, there is something to get lost in.
Usually very confusing in this type of game, the various menus related to the management of your park are very accessible. Information is clear, does not clutter the screen and is easily accessible. It’s very simple, if not the intrinsic management of the park which requires more control, the title is as accessible to regulars as to neophytes.
Once this huge tutorial passed, the campaign begins in a rather traditional way for a game of its kind. You find yourself at the head of a company on the verge of bankruptcy that must do everything to straighten out its finances. It will go through a first park with measured ambitions, with few means, which will have to attract a maximum of visitors, be profitable and allow to bail out the coffers.
And yet, we quickly realize that the campaign is totally out of the ordinary. Many cutscenes punctuate the mode, during which it is possible to make several choices. Let’s be clear, these decisions will not revolutionize the rest of the adventure as in Detroit: Become Human or The Quarry, but rather influence the way in which your next park should be created.
The goal will be for your visitors to leave the park with a smile, but without a penny in their pocket.
It is from this moment that you will be immersed in the big bath. There are two modes therefore, the campaign, as explained above, which will include some objectives to be fulfilled during the construction of the park, and the sandbox mode, which is rather traditional, since without constraints. The objective is clear: by building attractions, rides and points of sale, by recruiting staff including entertainers and by giving a nice look to your park, you will have to raise as much money as possible and make visitors happy. making sure they walk out of the park smiling, but penniless. Moreover, you can install cash dispensers in the park to allow them to extend their visit if they have no more cash on hand.
Obviously, to build the most attractive park possible, you need the attractions, rides and roller coasters that go with it. And on this point, Park Beyond is strong. It will not be possible to build your own rides, but the existing ones designed by the developers are quite wacky and numerous. One will think in particular of the combat of robots controlled by the visitors, or the slingshot, which projects the tourists with a catapult in a kind of funnel at a supernatural speed. 3/4 of the attractions present are obviously not realistic, but that’s what makes Park Beyond so charming.
The roller coasters are also completely blocked. Here you can build them from A to Z, without any limits, allowing you to realize the roller coaster of your dreams. Even if there are some that you wouldn’t really like to be in, like the ones with the thrusters, sending the cars into the void without any rails for safety. The game does feature some pre-made roller coasters, but we had a lot of issues with them, including one that just stuck for no reason, preventing visitors from being chained and thus making recipes. This is why we favor the construction of our own roller coaster, more tedious and time-consuming, but so much more satisfying once the visitors are vomiting after crossing the loops and other zigzags of this one.
Unlike RollerCoaster Tycoon and other Planet Coasters, Park Beyond unfortunately doesn’t offer many options once the attraction is turned on. It is thus impossible to choose to start it only from 75% or 100% occupancy, or to increase or decrease the number of wagons present at the same time on the rails.
The impossibility of rides, attractions, points of sale and other staff members brings a real plus.
The points of sale, for their part, allow us to choose the objects, food and other drinks offered for sale, and to increase or decrease the price according to trends. For example, you will receive an alert that vanilla sorbet is trending at the moment, it’s up to you to drastically increase the price while maintaining a certain profitability. Visitors will flock, then you will have to ask your employee to increase the pace, which will therefore cost you more money.
All these elements put one after the other, Park Beyond looks like Planet Coaster, which offered the same degree of customization. But where the title stands out is with its impossification system. We talk about it from the tutorial without explaining it too much, but it’s once you get to the second map of the campaign that you understand all its meaning and all its interest. In other words, a point of sale, an attraction or a staff member can be upgraded thanks to the wonder generated by your attractions. You will then get impossification points. The ice cream parlor then changes its look, gets an additional building and additional products to attract more people. An entertainer will then become totally oversized and entertain visitors even more. An attraction will also change appearance and gain fun or wonder points.
Visually, Park Beyond is very pretty with successful light effects. However, do not dwell on certain textures or models.
Overall, Park Beyond is not very ugly, with a very pleasant and successful cartoon look. But as soon as you zoom in, the contrast is striking. If the attractions are well modeled and neat, the rest of the game is very simplistic, the animations of the visitors completely dated and the textures too little detailed. We obviously rarely play so close, but it clearly stains for a game that, at first glance, seems quite pretty.
And finally, it is an observation that we can draw from our experience of Park Beyond. The title seems totally pissed off. The game is thus not optimized at all, with long loading times of several tens of seconds, if not several minutes. And what about those ultra poorly managed aisles that overlap for no reason, giving a totally messed up result? In addition, the game has, on many occasions, suffered from slight slowdowns, and this, on a good machine. Small defects, certainly not very serious, but which will have really had the gift of annoying us during our hours of play.
Conclusion
Park Beyond has all the weapons in hand to charm its audience over the long term. By wanting to stay realistic while bringing a touch of the surreal and madness, the developers seem to have found the miracle recipe for a theme park management game. Park Beyond could, of course, have been more barred, but it is nonetheless pleasant and very fun. The creation of the roller coasters is very advanced, and the existing attractions are totally crazy. The idea of impossification is a real plus, allowing to upgrade all attractions, points of sale and staff members. The campaign offers a very advanced level of personalization. Only the finish leaves something to be desired, with not crazy visual details, far too long loading times and poor texture management. Nevertheless, Park Beyond is, undeniably, one of the best RollerCoaster-likes of recent years.
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Park Beyond
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On aime :
Very fun to discover
Limitless customization options
The concept of impossification, well done
A cartoon look that matches well
Impressive accessibility
We like less:
Poor management of the texture of the aisles
Sometimes very long loading times
Do not dwell too much on the visual details
The developers remained “too wise”
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#Test #Park #RollerCoasterlike #barré