Gaming Cities: Skylines Review

It sounds like you ran into the "Death Wave" problem. Basically, when you zone new residential areas, the game will spawn a bunch of families to fill the plot, which makes sense. The problem is that the adults in these families have a limited age range, so they end up dying it roughly the same time.

 

Yeh the problem eventually sorts itself out if you either expand more slowly or wait until the bodies have been moved.

 

I picked up Skylines shortly after launch based on the positive reviews and after watching a few lets plays from youtubers I like. Well I thought it was fantastic, but only for a couple days. I'm not sure why, but I found myself becoming bored of it quite quickly. I'm surprised myself that I have tbh as there simply is so much depth to what you can achieve thanks to the mechanics. Careful planning can remove every car for instance, a feat that's completely impossible in SimCity.

As much as we like to admonish SimCity, there are some things that I really miss. I miss being able to micromanage the service buildings for a start. In Skylines you plonk down a service and that's that. You can't expand it, alter it, change the focus, anything. I loved the idea of plonking down a police station and then adding more cells, police cars etc. depending on what the area would benefit from.

Luckily I'm not worried about becoming bored of it because they've encouraged modding and custom content. This feature alone is the biggest positive I can imagine for a game like this. I'll be able to come back in a few months time and play a new game as if it's for the first time, all for free. That really is something to be applauded. It also helps to allegiate the issue that the cities look very very bland IMO, part of the issue of having only a 9-13 person dev team. The community can easily rectify this with custom models of every sort, hopefully adding hundreds of them won't shake performance.

It's a good game,mbut it needs more IMO. Thankfully we don't need to worry about that as both the devs and the community will fix that, heck I might get involved and make a skyscraper or two also.

 

People get so hyped these days and everyone goes crazy about new games, then they are forgotten about 2 weeks later. This game will at least grow thanks to the mod support though. But it needs a few weeks at least of patches, and a month or more of player made updates. So far it is mostly just cosmetic stuff. I really miss being able to micromanage the service buildings and stuff. The game needs a lot more depth. Currently it is a good city builder but a weak management game. Eventually it will be great at both, I just wish the hype and the reviews were a bit more grounded.

 

That's mostly why I still haven't purchased it. I bough too many game that I got bored of in less than 3 days. I still have great expectations for this game and will keep a close eye on it.

 

I've played 12 hours so far, and its been amongst the best 12 hours I've spent gaming this year. An absolutely fantastic game - in every sense of the word.

 

Having thought on things a little more, I think I've worked out why I got bored. To me there just doesn't feel like there's any progression, counter to what the review says. In SimCity I had a clear goal, develop my city enough so that I could invest and create one of this colossal builds like the arcology or space centre. Skylines had these too, but they're damn well hidden, I didn't even notice the monuments panel until my third map play through.

Even then, the goals aren't clear and feel very wishy washy. The thing is, without multiplayer it's much harder to remain focussed in a sandbox environment. Had this exact problem in Minecraft actually. On a server it was easy to create amazing things as I was competing against others, in single player creative mode I simply got bored and never completed my grand schemes. The same holds true for Skylines I feel. I spent a good 8-9 hours building a map and city up with the idea of making it some sort of alpine paradise. About 60% of the way in I just got bored as I realised only I would ever enjoy this creation. Sure I could put it up for download, but to be honest I don't see why somebody else would find it interesting, there will no doubt be a better one out there after all.

The other thing is that the monuments seem to be just that, set pieces that don't offer much. Sure they may boost your tourism trade or something, but they don't have a significant wow factor, which IMO plays a big part for me.

 

I picked this up to replace Simcity 2000. I haven't played any of the newer ones and I like to play Simcity 2000 occasionally. For me it works great. It lets me play for a week or two and revisit it when I get the itch again.

Honestly it is nearly the same but modernized and far fewer power lines needed.

Maybe it is just me but for some reason it doesn't look right though. Almost like it is being rendered at low resolution but I have all the settings to max @ native resolution (2048x1152). I thought it was FXAA but disabling it has the same low res look but jagged.

ed: i feel really stupid now. It was the film grain effect causing the issue. turned it off and it looks fine now!

 

There's apparently a mod called Dynamic Resolution which makes the graphics a lot sharper. That's the beauty of this game fully supporting mods

 

I've installed a mod that unlocks all 25 plots when you reach the final level, and the area to build on becomes very big indeed. I've played way too much and get obsessed for hours solving traffic issues. Game is really good and very enjoyable to play. Started over several times now, and each time I can expand a bit more before traffic becomes a problem that needs better planning. Really enjoying this game.

 

I've racked up 95hrs, its been out 10 days, and there were about 3-4 days where i either didnt play it or barely touched it (1-3hrs - which speaks to just how easy it is to go from mid-evening to early morning without realising), its extremely easy to play and chat on skype/ts/mumble etc with friends, essentially multi-task.

Its got its flaws, the traffic can be infuriating, but IMO all of its flaws are minimal or significantly outnumbered by the stuff they've done well.

Less than 2 weeks in and theres some fantastic mods (many within the first week), such as the 25 tiles, GTA5 map recreated, extended roads (lets you flip 1-ways, make 2-ways into 1-ways, although CO's new patch added it, i prefer the mod), the 'enable achievements' which enables them when they'd otherwise be disabled due to using mods, auto-save (should be a stock feature), there was a 'commercial fix' mod while that was an issue, auto-bulldoze destroyed and/or empty buildings... its a damn long list, and hasnt even touched on user created assets (GTA5 does i suppose).

With free updates adding tunnels and European wall-to-wall style buildings, and Paradox's history of supporting games with both paid and free DLC & updates, and the stuff the community can add, theres a solid foundation and a bright future for the game.

I'd agree its a little lacking in channelling you, i spent the first week only using 4 tiles, this week on another with 9 unlocked but covering about 3/4 of the space in some way. Theres no *need* to expand beyond 65k population (iirc), its all up to you, and thats assuming you havent used the official mod unlocking everything anyway. Theres stuff in SimCity i'd have liked to see, the specialities were great, as were the sub-ploppables, but maybe these are things for the future?

At £22, £17 from some official retailers at the time, its also nice to see a decent price being set. I can forgive the minor issues at £22, its when its £40-45 theres no excuses.

 

Bought it pretty soon after I found it, been playing it like mad. I close my eyes and see roads and intersections... Currently making a map of where I grew up. I love the water simulation in this game. It's very well done. I don't think that this review does the game justice to be honest. Modding support is a key aspect. Some of the first mods were even made by developers of the game. Such as one that fixed the parks lowering commercial demand bug. If you liked any of the sim city games, give this one a try. It's only 30 bucks, well worth it I think.

 

Surely a 'bug' should be fixed in an official patch rather than an optional 'mod'? Not liking the sound of that to be honest...

 

It is. It just takes time.

 

I don't see the problem. Ideally, all "bugs" would be fixed immediately by official patches, but in the event that patches aren't immediately available, mods that address the issue are a welcome solution in the interim.

It's worth mentioning that there has already been at least one patch released since launch, so it's not as if the developers are just disregarding any issues that exist. As Parge says, it just takes time.

 

I'm going to have to get this game. looks far better than simcities.

 

Yeah, I understand what is being said, it's just that as it was mentioned that the development team were working on mods to 'patch' I would prefer them specifically to focus on official patches. I was also unaware at the time that a patch had already been released.

I think I will visit Kinguin (I don't know of a better site) for a Steam code tomorrow, I just need to decide whether the Deluxe version (£15.18) is worth the extra <£3 just for the hell of knowing that I have the Deluxe version and that I am not 'missing' anything.

 

got the game the death wave is interesting (just need some more hospitals and the emm burners to remove dead people (one in each area is not enough try 4 and make sure you pay attention to the road snapping as they might have to go all the way round to turn around or get stuck in traffic)