It’s not all that fair to lavish too much hatred on the last SimCity. Mired as it was by a PR disaster that’ll feature in history books and ultimately leading to the closure of a beloved studio, it’d feel wrong to hate it too much. Especially since it was actually a pretty good evolution of the franchise – underneath that unnecessary furore – that offered that same micro-compulsion that such games rely on. It was just a shame that those inherent design decisions had proven so critically restrictive to the game – it was a burst of fun, but had little in the way of longevity. Enter Cities: Skylines; this is a title that would not have happened had Maxis and EA not royally ruined the franchise, and it really shows.
Many of the design concepts have carried over from the previous iteration of SimCity, such as the ‘Agent’ system – whereby each citizen is a ‘real’ person inside your simulated landscape – the reliance on roads to place structures onto and even a very familiar method of constructing the roads themselves. To anyone paying attention, it’d be fair to say that at times Cities: Skylines draws a little too much inspiration from the game that would be king.
Crucially, however, Cities: Skylines uses these systems much better and in a much less confining manner. You begin – as these games so commonly do – with a blank plot of land to gradually grow and cultivate into a thriving metropolis. It’s much slower going, however, providing that same incremental tweak-and-addition gameplay that makes the genre so appealing; just at a much slower pace. For a great deal of time you’ll be stuck with suburbia, rather than jumping road tool first into six-lane highways and office blocks. This shouldn’t be confused with tedium, however; there are always enough demands or problems to solve that you’ll quite gladly click away at your burgeoning town until you unlock greater options. It’s a staged process, with periodic population milestones garnering new buildings to play around with, services to try out or policies to enact.
It’s a surprisingly considered setup that means early on you’ve always got something to strive for. At later stages it rightly becomes less about these rewards and more about your own personal satisfaction. Knowing that you can better manage the zoning to reduce noise pollution for your residential areas, for example, will be enough of a reason to spend hours planning and executing the perfect city design. Or how that one poorly-designed road layout that always has cars piled up back-to-back will infuriate you so much that it’ll eat at your every waking thought as you try and figure out the ideal transportation system. In essence, it is what a city simulation ought to be, giving you a sense of natural growth through gradual improvements.
With that said, it doesn’t do everything right. As with most such games, the options for your services are limited and if you’re the sort to eventually tire of city simulation games due to a sense of repetition then you’ll likely suffer the same fate here. While there are enough options to provide for your city ably, there’s simply such a lack of variety that it eventually becomes a checklist of mechanics, ensuring that each new area is covered by police and fire stations, a hospital and the necessary education, transportation and waste removal services to make sure everyone is catered for.
It’s a problem inherent with the genre, one that can only be resolved through a much wider choice of buildings (often alongside greater complexity) or your own personal desire to design and improve your city. Traffic, too, can be a pain, but not because of its bothersome nature on the flow of your roads. There’s an issue with the traffic AI that often has practically every car sitting in the right-hand lane (or left-hand, if you choose the British option), even when they may be continuing straight ahead. It’s born of the AI’s decision that – eventually – it wants to make that right-hand turn even if it isn’t immediately, and will pick that lane when it’ll be much easier and quicker to take another.
It’s a frustrating problem because it doesn’t account for any further consideration of the road infrastructure, like a SatNav sending you over road works. Once you understand the issue, it can be counteracted with the design of your roads – and in a way it does create a challenging puzzle to solve – but it is a problem all the same.
Therein lies the real success of Cities: Skylines though, and one of the key ways it has managed to draw in such a large number of adoring fans: mods. Already there are mods that allow you to toggle traffic lights and even affect right of way, as well as talented creators adding in extra buildings to provide answers to the game’s otherwise lack of variety. There’s an in-game asset editor too, allowing you to create with the game’s objects, alter existing structures or even import 3D models of your own and then upload them to the Steam Workshop. Everything from UI improvements, beautification mods, new buildings and intersections, maps and more can and have been created for the game, improving any slight irritant and adding to the core tools that are already a stellar example of the genre.
It wouldn’t be fair to praise a game for the effort of its devoted community working on improvements for free, but you only have to look at the diehard fans of SimCity 4 and the ultimate demise of SimCity 2013 to realise these games can only survive with the persistent love of its modding community. Ultimately Cities: Skylines has provided exactly what players wanted from SimCity 2013, and that ought to be all it takes to convince would-be city planners.
Related Articles