When comparing Planet Coaster vs Subnautica, the Slant community recommends Subnautica for most people. In the question“What are the best PC games for kids?” Subnautica is ranked 10th while Planet Coaster is ranked 12th. The most important reason people chose Subnautica is:
The game takes place underwater, and it looks very good especially because of the new candy eye update. Looking up at the sun through the ocean looks pleasant and real. Coral reefs have multiple colors and look real as well. Graphics wise this game looks great and pulls off its theme of an underwater survival quite well.
Specs
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Pros
Pro Powerful terrain tool that allows 3D scultping
The terrain tool is very powerful, and addition to allowing for changing the terrain height, you can also pull out horizontal jutting terrain and cut in caves in any direction with pull and push tools. An example of this in action is a sample where Mount Rushmore was created using entirely in game tools.
Pro Developers are active in and listen to the community
Pro Powerful building creator
The building designer has many construction assets that are customizable to be any color and provides an amazing amount of customization by allowing you to intersect parts and rotate them in any orientation without having to worry about clipping.
The building system has a compromise between grid based and freeform construction, in that the first object you place down creates a grid around it that you can build to but you can go off grid whenever you need to.
Pro Well put together undo system
The undo system has a long memory and tracks even small changes making it easy to fix mistakes.
Pro Made by many of the developers of RCT2 and RCT3
Pro Construction system doesn't restrict you in any way
You can clip building objects together if you want to get a specific look that requires it, or you can make floating islands if you feel like it, allowing you to create whatever fantasy or sci fi theme you desire.
Pro Steam Workshop support breathes more life into the game every day
Anyone can upload their buildings and rides to the Steam Workshop, allowing for an potentially infinite amount of items to build in your game. Giving players a place to get new content, that's user created, you have near-unlimited possibilities for how to create each park you choose. This gives many players, who find creating new rides difficult, a way to make each new park fun and exciting, as well as giving creators a way to share their work. Due to this Workshop Support, and the hundreds of rides and buildings created by users already, the life of this game is near endless, with new ideas and new way to build popping up every day.
Pro Fully customizable shops
The shops in the game are purposefully made without a facade so you can customize them however you want. If you aren't interested in customizing your own, you can also download pre-built ones from the community workshop.
Pro Real time lighting system
Lights in game light up surrounding scenery in real time making the game's night time scenes look absolutely gorgeous. Lighting objects can also be customized to be any color and come in spotlights and other kinds of lights allowing you to make the exact ambiance you want.
Pro Visitors have intelligent behavior
Visitors come to your park in groups of friends or family and walk around with each other, and they'll dance when they hear music, hold hands, and gather around performers.
Pro Every game theme has a backstory that helps immerse players further
The themes in the game aren't simply generic assets, but there's actually in-game lore created for the different entertainment characters, as well as stores and scenery, adding extra realism and depth to the game assets. Due to this, each park and asset has a fuller and more rich background, allowing players to get even more lost in this experience than in any other theme park builder yet.
Pro Great theme and looks
The game takes place underwater, and it looks very good especially because of the new candy eye update. Looking up at the sun through the ocean looks pleasant and real. Coral reefs have multiple colors and look real as well. Graphics wise this game looks great and pulls off its theme of an underwater survival quite well.
Pro The sound effects really set up the overall atmosphere
The sound design in Subnautica is amazing. Even though the soundtrack can be bland at times, the sound effects for the ocean noises are incredibly atmospheric and really help to get the player in the mood for exploring a vast, alien ocean.
Pro Interesting creature design
The creature design in Subnautica deserves some major praise. Spotting a new, never seen before creature is extremely rewarding and there's a large variety of alien creatures to look for.
Pro Has a mode for people who just want to explore
Subnautica has four game modes: survival, freedom, hardcore, and creative. The first one pits the player against the elements and forces them to think about food and water through its thirst and hunger mechanics.
The second game mode basically removes every mechanic that is related to surviving, such as the aforementioned hunger and thirst mechanics. It also leaves all the items in your inventory after you die. In other words, it's a game mode for people who want to explore without having to bother with surviving. Which is nice, since Subnautica has a lot of stuff to explore.
The third one, as the name tells us, is more difficult. Not only do you have to worry about health, oxygen, water and hunger, you will have to worry about your life. Since this game mode gives you one chance to live, no respawning. If you die, you'll lose your progress and will have to start over again.
The fourth one will let you build a base of your dreams without worrying about food, oxygen, or thirst. It is the best mode for people who want to build and don't want to gather resources.
Pro No pointless multiplayer
Not every damn thing needs multiplayer, and multiplayer can often ruin an otherwise incredible experience. There's none to be found here, and that intensifies the lonely atmosphere. Also, the creators didn't waste resources on something that would fundamentally undermine the experience so they could focus on making the game the wonderful thing that it is.
Pro Very interesting for both new and long-time players
But it goes faster when you learn the game. Because everything is done manually.
Pro Incredibly satisfying tool-building mechanics
The whole process of creating new tools is mostly done using a sophisticated 3D-printer available from the start of the game. You gather various resources and transform them to create tools that you will need for your survival.
For example, organic matter gets printed into raw carbon, combine carbon with some zinc and you get a battery; combine that battery with some glass and you get a flashlight that helps you see in the dark. It's very straightforward but incredibly satisfying when you build your tools, especially since you are doing all of this while swimming in an ocean filled with predators.
Cons
Con Very large parks can lead to slowdown
The game currently isn't fully optimized to fill a large park completely without major frame rate drops.
Con Being unable to place decor and utility pieces on even slight hills is largely annoying
While pathways can be built on small hills, you will be unable to place miscellaneous assets without the use of the terrain tool. The game allows you to place buildings on these hills, however you cannot place any trashcans, benches, or any decorative piece down, as the game requires them to be build on squared-off pieces of land. Due to this, litter will pile up and the attractiveness of your park will decline unless you hire more leaning staff to pick up the excess trash, or completely undo your work and flatten the terrain.
Con Takes forever to build anything good
Yeah there's room for creativity if you have endless patience. The building is frustrating though. Only -certain- pieces will align with each other leaving you struggling to place rows of fences in a way that doesn't look obviously haphazard, and so many other things too like signs, hedgerows, lots of decor that has loads of potential but ends up looking wonky. And because the building pieces are really basic you have to spend ages building each individual scenery item if you want it to look anywhere near as good as the stuff that's already there when you load a scenario. If you don't have that patience, your parks may end up looking crap and this might make you quit out of frustration.
Con Park management system is not very sophisticated
The management options in Planet Coaster does not add much on top of the developer's previous game, Rollercoaster Tycoon 3. This means it doesn't require much work or management tweaking to get a park making money, and if you allow time to pass quickly you can just wait and let your cash reserves rise.
Con Only for PC
If you have a Mac or a Linux then you cannot play this game without BootCamp, Wine, etc.
Con Lacks Co-Op
This game was meant to be a survival game (and a bit of horror), most survival games are difficult, may get boring to play alone after time and this game has both. Having a second survivor in the story would mean to rewrite it again, but having a friend in an alien world would be better.
Con No real story
A bit underdeveloped story. Only in notes and some short cgi animations.