Cities: Skylines - A Breakthrough For City Simulation

    Normally I wouldn't cover something like this on my blog.  I've played my fair share of city games, and I have even tried to turn Roller Coaster Tycoon 3 into one, posting architectural creations inside a theme park game!  But I feel like this one deserves attention.  Cities: Skylines is releasing tomorrow, and in my opinion, it will be a major breakthrough for the city simulation genre.

    *All pictures shown were taken in-game.*

City Builders of the Past

    In my opinion, city simulation has recently been plagued by broken games, failed launches, and simply inadequate titles that fail to create a truly unique city builder.  SimCity 2013 is unfortunately a good example of this.  An open-ended city builder game like its popular predecessor SimCity 4, SimCity 2013 was expected to be an even better title.  It was published by Maxis, a division of Electronic Arts, but had countless problems at launch.  

    The game forced you to stay connected to the internet.  If EA's servers went down, you couldn't play the game.  (Maxis released an offline mode in March 2014...a year after release...but that is not the point).  City saves could only be saved on the cloud, not letting players to save their cities on their own hard drive.  If this wasn't bad enough, your city was limited to a small section of land only 4 square kilometers.  That's small!  This game isn't the only one that fails to represent a solid city builder, but I'll leave the others for another time.

    *SimCity's small plot size seen here.

Cities: Skylines

    I believe Cities: Skylines is the next innovation in the city simulation genre, and I think it could have a presence here on my blog.  Here's why.  

    After reading about the features and watching countless YouTube producers, who got their hands on press passes to show of the game-play, I have a good idea of what the developers at Paradox Interactive are wanting to create: a better and more robust SimCity.  First of all, you can unlock up to 100 square kilometers of seamless land to construct your city.  (100 square kilometers!  That's 25 SimCity-size plots all connected without borders.)  

    People love the ability to stretch the limits of simulation.  In SimCity, many players felt restricted, but with Skylines, there's plenty of room for expansion.  Skylines is very well optimized, and unlike other city titles, if your city starts to get really big, it will still run smooth if you have a decent computer.  (I'm looking at you Cities XL!)

    One of the coolest aspects of the game is the organic road system.  You can create and tweak almost anything in your city, and the intuitive road tool allows you to create organic and intricate road infrastructures to connect people effectively around the city.  Road traffic is simulated dynamically in-game.  Every car you see is going somewhere.  It's not some random object that disappears at different intervals like other city games.  

    This complex road system and the simulation of traffic, creates issues for the player.  You have to manage and try to solve traffic issues across your city if you want everything to function efficiently.  I've watched many people spend a lot of time tweaking and managing their roads to help make their city traffic lighter, and I have to say, it's a blast to watch.

     Each person in your city is also simulated like the cars.  What you see is what you get.  If the game tells you that you have 500,000 people in your city, that's how many people are really there.

    From what I've seen, the game is pretty amazing.  As the city planner, you can build everything you would expect in a real city.  Metro systems, trains, transportation, leisure, residential zones, commercial zones, industrial zones, districts...the list goes on and on.

Cities: Skylines and My Blog

    I'm still debating whether I should start a series of this game on my blog.  It's definitely a very creative and artsy game, and I really think I'll have a great time playing it.  Road systems would certainly be an interesting aspect to showcase and discuss problems pertaining to traffic and possible solutions.  I could also post the progress of my city as I build it.  I really think Skylines has the ability to show off architecture and architectural engineering from a very broad, city-sized perspective.  Everything you do affects your city.  On the other hand, YouTube could be a better outlet for this kind of content, but we'll see.  

    This blog is meant to show architectural creations from around the world, but you all know I enjoy to post content from video games as well, whether that be Minecraft, RCT3, or Skyrim.  Anything that involves designing and being creative is up for grabs as content on the blog in my opinion, and Cities: Skylines definitely encompasses that.

References:

>> Official Cities Skylines Page

>> CNET: SimCity Launch a Complete Disaster