Current:Home > ContactCities: Skylines II makes city planning fun, gorgeous and maddening -Wealth Empowerment Academy
Cities: Skylines II makes city planning fun, gorgeous and maddening
View
Date:2025-04-14 05:01:42
I wouldn't call myself an avid gamer. I dabble in platformers, roguelikes and co-operative games. I'll indulge an RPG to let its story sweep me off my feet. But I hold fast to a gaming PC for one reason, and one reason only: to play the epic urban planning simulator Cities: Skylines. 46 hours into the new sequel, I've founded no fewer than twelve cities, terribly mismanaged roads, and spawned utter industrial pollution. But I've loved every minute of it.
So if you're anything like me — curious about a city's infrastructure and whether or not you could steward one on your own, complete with accurately modeled traffic and weather patterns, residential communities and their ever-present social media feed with plenty of feedback about your work — this is the game for you. It's like SimCity on steroids: a marvel of a simulator game, even without the community mods that will undoubtedly follow the release.
The grid (still) reigns
If you've ever played a city simulator, you'll know that well-considered roadways are key to a functional city, much as they are in real life. To my delight, C:SII makes it easier to build and customize roads — especially when they're on grids and parallels.
Grid mode makes it quick to design infrastructure not unlike Manhattan's, while new roundabouts can simulate the diagonal quadrant system like that of Washington DC's. Much to my frustration, my attempts to allow roads to sprawl toward a city center more organically like a western European city ended up with less space and some awkward gaps between buildings. Despite being developed by Finnish developer Colossal Order, the game's mechanics push you towards North American block-style cities.
To further delve into madness, I'm at my wit's end about traffic management no matter which map I attempt. Other than planting trees for noise pollution, I've only begun to scratch the surface of the customizable traffic features.
Five times the playable area, five times the chaos
I've started small cities on each map of the ten new maps, only growing the population to about 10,000. If you're anything like me, I tend to create cities over and over until I'm satisfied with a starting layout and its growth potential. There are seemingly boundless options in C:SII with vastly increased playable space.
Each map has different terrain, but they're all maddening. The initial area is smaller than in the first game, but you can start purchasing more tiles as soon as you earn the money. I'm particularly invested in the Archipelago Haven and the Mountain Village cities, mostly because I've spent time on real-world islands and dream about mountain life. The archipelago has been especially exciting to build because you can eventually connect isolated islands to each other as you buy non-adjacent tiles.
The devil in the details
One thing I didn't think I miss from the original game is the districting paintbrush tool. C:SII replaces it with a click-and-set node system that makes it impossible for districts to overlap. Contrastingly, the ability to assign facilities to districts makes for a more realistic challenge, as you manage resources and ensure your citizens have access to services within a reasonable distance of their dwellings.
But for all its enhanced systems, Cities: Skylines II has gotten the most hype around it's demanding, pristine graphics. For the sake of my aging PC, I began gameplay with the lowest quality settings. Let me tell you, it still looks glorious. The water seems more watery in how it glistens. The weather details are stunning. When I do crave insight into the minutiae of the archipelagic nightmare I'm creating, I use the cinematic camera mode to zoom in on buildings and the cars. That being said, I'm definitely pushing the limits of my computer to see exactly what this game can do. Who knows, maybe I'll have to invest in a heartier machine.
In the meantime, you can find me planting trees along the highways whose traffic mirrors that of Northern Virginia's stretch of I-395 heading into DC, as I settle into my second full time job of virtual traffic management.
James Perkins Mastromarino contributed to this review.
veryGood! (6938)
Related
- House passes bill to add 66 new federal judgeships, but prospects murky after Biden veto threat
- Matty Healy Joins Phoebe Bridgers Onstage as She Opens for Taylor Swift on Eras Tour
- It's getting easier to find baby formula. But you might still run into bare shelves
- 15 Practical Mother's Day Gifts She'll Actually Use
- Head of the Federal Aviation Administration to resign, allowing Trump to pick his successor
- Kirsten Gillibrand on Climate Change: Where the Candidate Stands
- 24-Hour Flash Deal: Samsung Galaxy A23 5G Phone for Just $130
- Dearest Readers, Let's Fact-Check Queen Charlotte: A Bridgerton Story, Shall We?
- Meta releases AI model to enhance Metaverse experience
- Many Man-Made Earthquakes in Western Canada Can Now Be Linked to Fracking
Ranking
- 'Most Whopper
- 18 Slitty Dresses Under $60 That Are Worth Shaving Your Legs For
- Kamala Harris on Climate Change: Where the Candidate Stands
- Today’s Climate: July 3-4, 2010
- Juan Soto to be introduced by Mets at Citi Field after striking record $765 million, 15
- The Iron Sheik, wrestling legend, dies at age 81
- Two-thirds of Americans now have a dim view of tipping, survey shows
- Sea Level Rise Will Rapidly Worsen Coastal Flooding in Coming Decades, NOAA Warns
Recommendation
From family road trips to travel woes: Americans are navigating skyrocketing holiday costs
'Where is humanity?' ask the helpless doctors of Ethiopia's embattled Tigray region
18 Slitty Dresses Under $60 That Are Worth Shaving Your Legs For
'Where is humanity?' ask the helpless doctors of Ethiopia's embattled Tigray region
Arkansas State Police probe death of woman found after officer
Today’s Climate: July 14, 2010
Major hotel chain abandons San Francisco, blaming city's clouded future
Here Are All of the Shows That Have Been Impacted By the WGA Strike 2023