10/10: The city builder every other city builder wishes it was. May take over the player's life.


Every fan of management simulation games will obsess over Cities: Skylines while anyone who would enjoy the challenge of growing a city will have a great time with this game if they can tolerate the repetetive nature that hardcore management simulation fans thrive under.

You grow the city, get more types of services and problems to confront, spend money where needed, and hope that your city can reach the next classification of city type, which grants more money, unlocks new buildings, and that takes you back to square one. This style of gameplay sometimes gets too repetetive even for my aspie mindset of repetition, but playing this game in short bursts helps me tackle city problems and prevents me from staring at the screen with a blank expression wondering about what to do next while I wonder about how to use what little money I have to expand with while I'm unable to secure any more financing, and see money trickle into my account. (And sometimes watch money run out, depending on which way my luck cuts.)


It's obvious from the get-go that this sort of game is graphics intensive, and Cities: Skylines is excellent in the graphics department. You can easily see things like rain and fog, and see them all either up close, far away, and in full 3D. But for better or worse, fog is mostly visible from far away, and not from up close.
http://steamproxy.net/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=918347573

The animation and graphics for pollution is absolutely perfect. You can not only see the dirty, filthy, stinking haze close up, but you can also see it from far away on buildings that pollute.
http://steamproxy.net/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=918355011

The only real complaint about graphics, is that industries involved in oil drilling do not build oil derricks on top of their zones.

It actually took me a long time to turn on the sound, and I only did so for the sake of writing a review. There's nothing awe-inspiring or game-breaking about the game's sounds, but I really disliked the music. The music was totally out of place, especially for viewing densely populated areas and streets with densely packed traffic. Your best bet is to just move the main volume slider to 0%, and play music that's to your liking. Of course, you are free to mute the music volume should you want to hear the game and also listen to your own music.


This game is so awesome, I cannot include everything I like about Cities: Skylines. (I tried, but my original review would not fit when I tried to copy and paste!) Cities:Skylines takes features from past city management sims, and takes them to a whole new level without feeling outright like a copycat game. I will say that Cities: Skylines has everything I enjoy about city management games dating back to 1990 and the added ability to rename buildings of every kind, create districts, and rename these districts to anything one wishes.


While I do love Cities: Skylines, I am bothered by some of the game's flaws, and there's enough flaws, I'm unable to bury the reader in as many paragraphs as I wanted, but I made the mistake of including things that I wish were features, or what I thought should be done differently. With a city of close to 36,000 people, the only complaints I have room to mention, is that collection of trash and dead bodies is deeply flawed. It doesn't matter if one has enough landfill or incenerator capacity or space in cemetaries and creamatories, the larger your city becomes, the more likely you can expect to see icons over buildings indicating filthy, stinking garbage and rotting corpses desperately in need of disposal, and the game does nothing to prioritize collection.

A game as complex as Cities: Skylines certainly requires a tutorial, but none is included in game. Certainly the most seasoned of us need an interactive lesson in the fundamentals.

The act of forbidding tractor trailers from operating on roads via city ordinance seems like a good idea at first, it really bothers me that banning tractor trailers on specific streets (and sometimes stretches of streets) requires making micro-districts dedicated solely to vehicle bans.
http://steamproxy.net/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=916928296


Cities: Skylines has the city management game genre cornered. No other city management sim competes. Buy this game. Buy it at any price. If you can wait for a sale, that's cool, too. If you like the idea of giving cities a unique feel, you have the ability to rename many of the things you see on see in your city. And when you do buy this game, you should check out the DLC available for Cities: Skylines. Some of them are really cool, but others look like awful moneygrabs that you would think only Electronic Arts would inflict upon the gaming world. You should especially check out tutorials for this game before you start playing it, because if you don't, you can expect quite a bit of trial and error in the building of your city, and that could end up costing you lots of money. Especially make sure you read the manual, unless you want to look at the forums (or ask questions that were long since asked) about how to build elevated roads.

The game, however, is still plenty of good fun without any DLC's or custom content, so you can expect lots of fun times playing Cities: Skylines. Just be sure to let your friends and family know they'll never hear from you again, and be prepared to stay up all night.

[h1]TL;DR:[/h1] 10/10: The city builder every other city builder wishes it was. May take over the player's life. [h1]Overview:[/h1] Every fan of management simulation games will obsess over Cities: Skylines while anyone who would enjoy the challenge of growing a city will have a great time with this game if they can tolerate the repetetive nature that hardcore management simulation fans thrive under. You grow the city, get more types of services and problems to confront, spend money where needed, and hope that your city can reach the next classification of city type, which grants more money, unlocks new buildings, and that takes you back to square one. This style of gameplay sometimes gets too repetetive even for my aspie mindset of repetition, but playing this game in short bursts helps me tackle city problems and prevents me from staring at the screen with a blank expression wondering about what to do next while I wonder about how to use what little money I have to expand with while I'm unable to secure any more financing, and see money trickle into my account. (And sometimes watch money run out, depending on which way my luck cuts.) [h1]Graphics and sound:[/h1] It's obvious from the get-go that this sort of game is graphics intensive, and Cities: Skylines is excellent in the graphics department. You can easily see things like rain and fog, and see them all either up close, far away, and in full 3D. But for better or worse, fog is mostly visible from far away, and not from up close. http://steamproxy.net/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=918347573 The animation and graphics for pollution is absolutely perfect. You can not only see the dirty, filthy, stinking haze close up, but you can also see it from far away on buildings that pollute. http://steamproxy.net/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=918355011 The only real complaint about graphics, is that industries involved in oil drilling do not build oil derricks on top of their zones. It actually took me a long time to turn on the sound, and I only did so for the sake of writing a review. There's nothing awe-inspiring or game-breaking about the game's sounds, but I really disliked the music. The music was totally out of place, especially for viewing densely populated areas and streets with densely packed traffic. Your best bet is to just move the main volume slider to 0%, and play music that's to your liking. Of course, you are free to mute the music volume should you want to hear the game and also listen to your own music. [h1]Positives:[/h1] This game is so awesome, I cannot include everything I like about Cities: Skylines. (I tried, but my original review would not fit when I tried to copy and paste!) Cities:Skylines takes features from past city management sims, and takes them to a whole new level without feeling outright like a copycat game. I will say that Cities: Skylines has everything I enjoy about city management games dating back to 1990 and the added ability to rename buildings of every kind, create districts, and rename these districts to anything one wishes. [h1]Negatives:[/h1] While I do love Cities: Skylines, I am bothered by some of the game's flaws, and there's enough flaws, I'm unable to bury the reader in as many paragraphs as I wanted, but I made the mistake of including things that I wish were features, or what I thought should be done differently. With a city of close to 36,000 people, the only complaints I have room to mention, is that collection of trash and dead bodies is deeply flawed. It doesn't matter if one has enough landfill or incenerator capacity or space in cemetaries and creamatories, the larger your city becomes, the more likely you can expect to see icons over buildings indicating filthy, stinking garbage and rotting corpses desperately in need of disposal, and the game does nothing to prioritize collection. A game as complex as Cities: Skylines certainly requires a tutorial, but none is included in game. Certainly the most seasoned of us need an interactive lesson in the fundamentals. The act of forbidding tractor trailers from operating on roads via city ordinance seems like a good idea at first, it really bothers me that banning tractor trailers on specific streets (and sometimes stretches of streets) requires making micro-districts dedicated solely to vehicle bans. http://steamproxy.net/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=916928296 [h1]Conclusion:[/h1] Cities: Skylines has the city management game genre cornered. No other city management sim competes. Buy this game. Buy it at any price. If you can wait for a sale, that's cool, too. If you like the idea of giving cities a unique feel, you have the ability to rename many of the things you see on see in your city. And when you do buy this game, you should check out the DLC available for Cities: Skylines. Some of them are really cool, but others look like awful moneygrabs that you would think only Electronic Arts would inflict upon the gaming world. You should especially check out tutorials for this game before you start playing it, because if you don't, you can expect quite a bit of trial and error in the building of your city, and that could end up costing you lots of money. Especially make sure you read the manual, unless you want to look at the forums (or ask questions that were long since asked) about how to build elevated roads. The game, however, is still plenty of good fun without any DLC's or custom content, so you can expect lots of fun times playing Cities: Skylines. Just be sure to let your friends and family know they'll never hear from you again, and be prepared to stay up all night.