Cities: Skylinesis a game coming in hot.
So there’s a surprising amount of excitement and expectation for Colossal’s attempt at fixingSimCity’smistakes.
Mostly, it’s good.
The Good News
Good news first!
If you play city-building games to, well,buildcities, this is the best you could get.
Above is the result of that week.
It’s a huge city, big enough that it’s spawned secondary business centres and some industrial/rural communities.
Below, however, you’ll see that it doesn’t even take up half the available territory.
We’ll get to why this is a bad idea a little later.
Cities: Skylinesis a gorgeous video game.
This might sound trivial, but it’s really, really cool!
Probably the highlight of the game for me is just many tools and options there are for customisation.
I love how you could painlessly elevate roads to create expressways.
I love how the game has strong Steam Workshop support, where people (or you!)
Do you know what else is great about building your own city?
Being able to name it, and everything inside it.
And I really do mean everything.
you could name the city, you could create and name districts, you could even name individual stores.
The districts are more than just names, though.
Want to ban heavy vehicles from your city centre?
Want to offer free public transport to a struggling industrial area?
you’re able to do that.
Institute legal drug use on your beachside holiday areas?
The Bad News
Now for the bad news.
It’s a hassle, but it’s bearable.
And everyone’s stuck on it.
See all those trucks backed up?
There are fire engines, cop cars, garbage trucks and hearses there.
Note that this isn’t a problem with the way my city isdesigned.
At times it feels likeSkylinesis a simulator where traffic iseverything, instead of one of many design elements.
This kind of thing is heart-breaking, because it tugs at the OCD many city-builders experience while playing.
Cut down on the problems and make everyone happy.
If that’s you, there is no happiness withSkylines, at least for now.
Here’s a more nuts-and-bolts example of what I’m talking about.
In this small rump area of my city, there arethreecemeteries andthreecrematoriums (highlighted in blue).
They’re taking up a crazy amount of real estate relative to everything else!
That shouldn’t be happening.
and just goes out and does it.
